
Class. 
Book. 



PR 5^^S 



*)<* 



; . 






THE LIFE 



OF 



SIB WALTEE SCOTT 




SAe/ Swxh&y&^t/t^tA 



7 



J%.. & C.BLAOK, EDIKMUROH. 



THE LIFE 



OF 



SIB WALTEE SCOTT 

REPRINTED WITH CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS 
FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 

By THE EEV. G? E^GLEIG, M.A. 
it 

CHAPLAIN- GENERAL TO THE FORCES 




ABBOTSFORD 



EDINBUEGH: A. & 0. BLACK 
1871 






Printed by R. Clauk, Edinburgh, 



"" /*' /focu€6A^sdf~ \ 




, : / 2& : 












; M^ 



There appeared in the Quarterly Review for January 
18G8 an article based upon Lockhart's admirable bio- 
graphy, which, without attempting closely to analyse, 
much less to pass judgment on the genius and literary 
labours of Walter Scott the Poet, aimed at giving a brief, 
but not inaccurate sketch of the personal career and indi- 
vidual character of Walter Scott the Man. 

The article in question, I have reason to believe, 
attracted some attention at the time, and was generally 
approved. But it certainly did not enter into my con- 
templation that I should ever be called upon to 
republish it in a separate form ; and still less could I 
anticipate that, after an interval of more than three 
years, such a proposal should be made to me. Circum- 
stances, however, and among them the determination to 



VI PKEFACE. 

hold as a festal day the Centenary of Sir Walter's birth, 
appear to have suggested to others the fitness of such 
republication. It was impossible for me to object to 
an arrangement which, if it effected no other purpose, 
settled this point, that my attempt to delineate in his 
true colours the great and good man whom Scotland 
delighted to honour, had not, in the estimation of compe- 
tent judges, been altogether a failure. Hence the appear- 
ance at this time of a little volume, the compilation of 
which, when first undertaken, was, as its revision and 
correction are now, truly a labour of love. 

And here I might stop, but for the obligation under 
which a sense of duty lays me, to remove if I can, from the 
minds of some of Sir Walter's relatives and connections an 
erroneous impression which the narrative, as originally de- 
tailed in the pages of the Quarterly Review, seems to have 
made upon them. ' I am myself unable to discover a sen- 
tence or a phrase which, if fairly tested, can be held to throw 
the shadow of a doubt over the place which Sir Walter's 
family held in society. That his grandfather rented a 
farm under a distant relative is as certain as that his 
father lived and died a Writer to the Signet. But the 
farmer and the writer were equally gentlemen by descent, 
by habits of life, by social relations ; and I have very 
much gone apart from my own intentions, if any expres- 
sion used by me has conveyed to others an opposite 



PREFACE. Vll 

idea. The truth is, that in Scotland a hundred or 
more years ago, the cadets of good families not unfre- 
quently became cultivators on the estates of their elder 
brothers, or near connections, rather than emigrate or 
seek service under the East India Company. For even 
after dreams of the possible restoration of the ancient 
line had ceased to exercise influence over them, there 
prevailed in many quarters a settled determination 
never to send a son out into life in any capacity which 
should impose upon him the necessity of taking the 
oaths of allegiance and abjuration as they then ran. 
Indeed I myself recollect more than one household in 
which, after the present century had begun, this prin- 
ciple or prejudice, call it which you will, still lingered ; 
and all who know anything of Stirlingshire will vouch 
for the correctness of my statement when I say, that 
among the county families of that romantic district 
none were held in higher respect and esteem than 
the amiable brother and his three maiden sisters, who, 
as tenant farmers under Murray of Polmaise, occupied 
the humble farm-house, and cultivated the not very 
fertile fields of Murrayshall. Eobert of Sandy-Knowe 
seems to have been much such another as James 
Wilsone of Murrayshall — or, as all the young people of 
the county, whom he and his admirable sisters delighted 
to make happy, called him — Uncle Jamie. 



Ylll PREFACE. 

Since this sketch was written, Mr. Hope Scott has 
published a cheap edition of Lockhart's abridgment of 
the great work which supplied me with almost all my 
materials. Let me express the hope, that they who 
honour these pages with a perusal, will look beyond 
them to the more important and interesting volume thus 
brought within their easy reach. For no judgment can 
be more sound in regard to matters like this than that 
which Mr. Hope Scott has delivered in his introductory 
letter, and with which I beg to close my own, perhaps, 
too elaborate preface. 

" In dealing with such a character, it is hardly neces- 
sary to say, that the omission of details becomes, after a 
certain point, a serious injury to the truth of the whole 
portrait ; and if any man should object that this volume 
is not short enough, I should be inclined to answer, 
that if he reads by foot-rule he had better not think of 
studying, in any shape, the life of Walter Scott." 

G. E,. G. 

London, June 1871. 




EDINBURGH FROM ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL. 



The Scottish Capital has the honour of claiming Sir 
Walter Scott as one of the most illustrious of the many 
illustrious sons whom she has reared. He was born in 
the Old Town of Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 1771, 
in an old street called the College Wynd, and in a 
house which soon after .his birth was pulled down in 
order to make way for a new front to the College itself. 
His descent, according to his own showing, " was neither 
distinguished nor sordid, but such as the prejudices of 
his country justified him in accounting gentle." He 



2 THE LIFE OF 

traced his line back on the one side through a succession 
of Jacobite gentlemen and Moss-troopers, to Avid Scott 
of Harden and his spouse, renowned in Border song as 
"The Flower of Yarrow." His pedigree on the other 
side connected him with the "Bauld Butherfords that 
were sae stout," the MacDougals of Lorn, and the S win- 
tons of Swinton. All this is duly set forth in the frag- 
ment of autobiography with which Mr. Lockhart has 
prefaced his deeply interesting work, and is duly 
emblazoned on the panels of the ceiling in the hall at 
Abbotsford. But the noblest pedigrees do not neces- 
sarily shield those who lay claim to them from the 
vicissitudes of fortune. There are at this moment in 
the east of London more than one small shop-keeper 
whose lineal descent from the Plantagenets cannot be 
questioned, and we ourselves have in early life pur- 
chased skeins of silk from two ladies standing behind 
a counter, through whose veins some of the best blood of 
Scotland circulated. So it was with the branch of the 
Scott family to which Sir Walter belonged. His grand- 
father, after trying and abandoning the career of a mer- 
chant seaman, settled down upon the lands of Sandy- 
Knowe as a tenant farmer, under his relative, Mr. Scott 
of Harden. The farmer's eldest son, the father of Sir 
Walter, was bred, the first of his family, to a town life. 
Having served an apprenticeship to a Writer to the 
Signet, he was taken as a partner into the house, and, 
on the death of the head of the firm, succeeded to the 
business, which he appears to have conducted with 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 6 

equal honour and profit. This gentleman, Mr. Walter 
Scott, married the eldest daughter of Dr. W. Kuther- 
ford, a physician in good practice, and Professor of 
Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. Not fewer 
than twelve children were the fruit of their union. 
There must, however, have been great delicacy of con- 
stitution in the race, for seven out of the twelve died in 
infancy, and from among the remaining five, one only, 
Sir Walter himself, barely attained to the nearest limits 
of old age. 

Such, when stripped of the halo which a fervid 
imagination cast over it, was the real place among men 
into which, by the accident of birth, Sir Walter Scott 
was introduced. The stand-point which it gave him 
was neither among the very high nor the very low, but in 
that middle class which constitutes the back-bone of 
society both in Scotland and England. Had fancy been 
with him less exuberant than it was, or the incidents of 
his early training different, he would have probably 
accepted it for what it was worth, and made the most 
of it. As the case stood, the present condition of his 
family, though in every respect that of gentle-folks, was 
thrust out of view, in order that he might connect it 
with times when social precedence was given to those 
who could ride abroad followed by the largest body of 
armed retainers, and were most prompt to use them for 
the good or ill of their neighbours. For, shrewd and 
acute as in common affairs he seemed to be, and inno- 
cent of those eccentricities with which genius is often 



4 THE LIFE OF 

allied, imagination was in Sir Walter Scott the domi- 
nant faculty to an extent rarely cognisable elsewhere 
in sane men. From the dawn of his powers to their 
extinction, it may be predicated of him that he lived two 
lives ; one in the world of living men, another in a world 
which he created for himself ; and it is not too much 
to say that, so far as his own consciousness was con- 
cerned, the latter had in it a great deal more of reality 
than the former. 

At the period of his birth, and for about eighteen 
months subsequently, Scott was as robust and healthy 
a child as ever breathed. A full broad chest, and well- 
knit frame, gave promise indeed of more than common 
vigour in after years. And, subject to a single grievous 
defect, this promise was fulfilled. The nurse, when 
about to place him one morning in his bath, dis- 
covered that he had lost the use of one of his limbs, 
and he never recovered it. No one could account 
for the misfortune, because he had been more than 
usually playful and active the night before. There, 
however, the calamity was, and all that skill and 
tenderness could devise failed to remove it. At last 
his parents were recommended to try the effect of 
country air, and he was sent to Sandy-Knowe. "It 
is here," he says, speaking of himself, "at Sandy- 
Knowe, in the residence of my paternal grandfather, 
that I had the first consciousness of existence ;" and 
how deep and indelible the impression was which the 
scenery of that romantic spot made upon his imagina- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 5 

tion, the readers of Marmion and the Eve of St. John 
do not need to be reminded. Nor was it exclusively 
from the features of the landscape, including as these 
did some of the most striking objects on the Scottish 
Border, that early inspiration came. After spending 




SMAILHOLME TOWER: SANDY-KNOWE. 



hours in some sheltered nook, whither the cow-bailie 
carried him, that he might look down upon the ewe- 
milking, and listen to the ewe-milker's songs, he would 
be borne back again and laid upon a couch, beside which 
his grandmother and aunt took it by turns to sit, and to 



b THE LIFE OF 

keep him in the highest state of happy excitement with 
their Border legends. And when to this we add that to 
all the neighbours round the sickly child became an 
object of kindly interest, that one by one they looked 
in to cheer him with such tales as they could tell — the 
minister to talk to him about the people he had seen, 
and some of the worthies of Queen Anne's reign with 
whom he had been acquainted ; good Mr. Carte, the 
farmer at Yet-byre, to describe how brave Scottish cava- 
liers fought at Prestonpans, and suffered at Carlisle — it 
is not to be wondered at that he should have grown up 
to be what he really was, the most extraordinary com- 
bination of the heroic and the practical that the world 
has witnessed in modern times. For this, in point of 
fact, was the process of his education for years. As 
soon as he had learned to read, he read ballads and 
romances. Before he could put two letters together, 
ballads, romances, and legends were poured through the 
ear into his mind ; and these, stored up in a memory 
portentously tenacious, became the elements out of 
which his moral and intellectual nature grew into 
shape. 

The negligence of one nurse appears to have cost 
the child the full use of his limbs ; his life had well 
nigh fallen a sacrifice to the wild caprice of another. 
" It seems," he writes, " my mother sent a maid with 
me, that I might be no inconvenience to the family at 
Sandy-Knowe. But the damsel sent on that important 
mission had left her heart behind her, in the keeping of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 

some wild fellow it is likely, who had done and said 
more to her than he was like to make good. She became 
extremely desirous to return to Edinburgh, and, as my 
mother made a point of her remaining where she was, 
she contracted a sort of hatred at poor me, as the cause 
of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. This rose, I 
suppose, to a sort of delirious affection, for she confessed 
to old Alison Wilson, the house-keeper, that she had 
carried me up to the crags, meaning, under a strong 
temptation of the devil, to cut my throat with her 
scissors and bury me in the moss. Alison instantly 
took possession of my person, and took care that her 
confidant should not be subject to any further tempta- 
tion so far as I was concerned. She was dismissed, of 
course, and I have heard became afterwards insane." 

One of the remedies applied at Sandy-Knowe to 
remove or modify the child's lameness, seems to have 
been borrowed from the usages of those half-barbarous 
times, which had for him, through life, peculiar 
charms. His friends were advised, as often as a sheep 
was killed for the use of the family, to strip the boy, 
and swathe him up in the skin, warm as it was flayed 
from the carcass of the animal. "In this Tartar-like 
habiliment," he says, " I well remember lying upon 
the floor of the little parlour in the farm-house, while 
my grandfather, a venerable old man with white hair, 
used every inducement to make me try to crawl. I 
also distinctly remember the late Sir George M'Dougal 
of Mackerstoun, father of the present Sir Henry 



8 THE LIFE OF 

Hay M'Dougal, joining in this kindly attempt. He 
was, God knows how, a relative of ours, and I still 
recollect him, in his old-fashioned military habit (he had 
been Colonel of the Greys), with a small cocked hat, 
deeply laced, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a 
light- coloured coat, with milk-white locks, tied in a 
military fashion, kneeling on the ground before me, and 
dragging his watch along the carpet to induce me to 
follow it. The benevolent old soldier, and the infant 
wrapped in his sheep-skin, would have afforded an odd 
group to uninterested spectators. This must have hap- 
pened about my third year, for Sir George M'Dougal 
and my grandfather both died shortly after that period." 
The death of the grandfather here referred to occa- 
sioned no change in the grandson's circumstances. The 
widow, assisted by her second son, kept the farm on, and 
little Walter continued to engross her and her daughter's 
tenderest care and attention. These were so far re- 
warded, that though the limb continued shrunk and 
withered, the child's general health improved, and im- 
proved health brought with it growing energy. The 
brave little fellow began that struggle against nature, of 
which he says in his diary that it was maintained 
throughout life. He first stood, then walked, and by 
and by, with the help of a stick, began to run. A pony 
was next provided for him, which he learned to ride 
with great boldness, and to manage with skill. It was 
thought that the Bath waters might complete the cure 
thus apparently begun. But though he spent a whole 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. \) 

year in Bath, his aunt journeying with him, nothing 
came of it so far as the lameness was concerned. A 
like result attended his removal to Prestonpans and the 
application of sea-bathing. Meanwhile his education, 
using that term in its ordinary sense, was necessarily 
neglected. He went to no school, there was not the 
pretence of regularity in his lessons ; he was, how- 
ever, educating himself, as all really great men have 
usually done. Whatever he read he remembered, and 
his reading was in its own way as large as it was dis- 
cursive. To what extent this self-education was carried, 
a letter from Mrs. Cockburn, the accomplished authoress 
of the " Flowers of the Forest," shows. Writing to one 
of her friends, in the winter of 1777, she says : — 

" I last night supped at Mr. Walter Scott's. He has 
the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He 
was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I 
made him read on — it was the description of a ship- 
wreck. His passion rose with the storm. He lifted his 
eyes and hands, ' That's the mast gone,' says he, ' crash 
it goes. They will all perish.' After his agitation he 
turns to me, ' That is too melancholy,' says he, ' I had 
better read you something more amusing.' I preferred 
a little chat, and asked him his opinion of Milton and 
other books he was reading, which he gave me wonder- 
fully. One of his observations was — How strange it is 
that Adam, just new come into the world, should know 
everything. That must be the poet's fancy, says he. 
But when he was told he was created perfect by God, 



10 THE LIFE OF 

he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last night he 
told his aunt he liked that lady. 'What lady?' says 
she. ' Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso, 
like me.' ' Dear Walter,' says Aunt Jenny, ' what is a 
virtuoso?' 'Don't you know? Why it's one who 
wishes and will know everything.' Now, sir, you will 
think this a very silly story. Pray what age do you 
suppose this boy to be ? Why, twelve or fourteen. No 
such thing. He is not quite six years old." 

Another point connected with this early stage in 
Sir Walter's career deserves notice. He read men and 
things as closely, and remembered them as well, as he 
did books. The first play at which he was ever present 
he saw in Bath. It was " As you Like it ;" and, though 
he was scarcely five years old at the time, the impres- 
sion which it made upon him never passed away. 
Dugald Dalgetty, one of the best drawn characters in all 
his romances, encountered him in the shape of a half- 
pay veteran of George II.'s reign, at Prestonpans. In- 
deed it is marvellous how, from year to year, and in 
one locality after another, he gathered up, from boy- 
hood, scenes, characters, incidents ; all of which, as the 
occasion arose, were drawn forth from the great store- 
house of his memory and turned to account. With him 
the child was indeed father to the man. 

Mr. Lockhart tells us that " Walter's progress in 
horsemanship probably reminded his father that it was 
time he should be learning other things beyond the 
department of Aunt Jenny and Uncle Thomas." What- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



11 



ever the immediate inducement may have been, it is 
certain that the "Writer brought his lame son home in 
1778 ; and the same year, after trying first a little 




LEECHMAN'S SCHOOL : BKISTO STREET, EDINBURGH. 



private school in Bristo Street, kept by a Mr. Leechman, 
and then a private tutor (Mr. Mitchel), sent him with 
his brothers to the High School. His progress there was, 
by all accounts, more eccentric than steady. He never 
had patience then or in after life to attend to the techni- 
calities of grammar or syntax ; but his quick apprehen- 
sion and powerful memory enabled him to perform, with 
little labour, the usual routine of tasks. His place in 
the class was usually about the middle, with a tendency 
to gravitate downwards rather than upwards. Yet his 
exceeding readiness, and a habit into which he fell of 
versifying such exercises as were taken from the Latin 



12 THE LIFE OF 

poets, won him the esteem and respect of the rector, Dr. 
Adam. The following instance of readiness is worth 
giving. 

It happened on one occasion that a stupid boy, 
boggling at the meaning of the Latin word cum, was 
asked " What part of speech is with V The dolt replied, 
" A substantive." The rector, after a moment's pause, 
thought it worth while to ask the dux, or head boy, 
whether with was ever a substantive. No answer was 
given by him or by others, till it came to Scott's turn, 
w T hen he replied, "And Samson said unto Delilah, if 
they bind me with seven withs that were never dried, 
then shall I be weak, and as another man." 

It was not, however, his quickness in such matters 
that rendered Walter, what he very soon became, a 
special favourite with his schoolfellows. Two qualities 
he possessed which are with boys irresistible. He was 
brave, and, as they were not long in finding out, a 
capital story-teller. His bravery he exhibited in feats of 
climbing, such as, considering his lameness, appeared to 
be miraculous. And he was always ready to fight, pro- 
vided his opponent would meet him, face to face, both 
strapped upon a plank. As to his stories, they were at 
once wondrous and interminable. Many a lesson was 
indifferently learned in consequence of the eagerness of 
his class-fellows to listen, even in school-hours ; and 
happy were they who, when the business of school was 
over, or before it began, succeeded in getting nearest to 
him in the circle which was drawn round the fire. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



13 



Other occasions for the exhibition of courage than 
single combats among the boys themselves, were afforded 
in the days of which we are now speaking. There were 
snow-ball battles with the city-guard, and bickers with 
the youthful inhabitants of the Cowgate. In all these 
Walter, lame as he was, bore a prominent part. His 




touching story of " Green-breeks" is well known. Let 
us add, that neither the bickers themselves, nor incidents 
akin to that which is so graphically recorded in the 
preface to the last edition of Waverley were peculiar 
to Edinburgh. We ourselves, for example, retain a dis- 
tinct recollection of a kindred catastrophe. A bicker, it 



14 THE LIFE OF 

may be necessary to inform some of our readers, was not 
a combat, but a war extending often over years, and 
marked by frequent skirmishes and general actions be- 
tween the boys of different schools, or of different locali- 
ties, in the same town. It used to be waged without 
much skill, but with great determination ; and the party 
which could boast of the most plucky leader generally 
prevailed in the end. It happened that in one of the 
most romantic of Scottish towns the boys of a school, 
over which Dr. Kussell, afterwards the learned and much- 
esteemed Bishop of Glasgow presided, were at war with 
the boys of the Castle-hill. The bishop's column got the 
worst of it on one occasion, and retreated or fled from 
the captured position into the streets. They were pur- 
sued and hemmed in by superior numbers, whereupon 
the leader of the roughs, a very spirited fellow, chal- 
lenged the leader of his enemies to single combat, offer- 
ing, like one of Homer's heroes, to stake the fortunes of 
the war on the issue of the duel. The challenge could 
not be declined, though the challenged felt that he was 
over-matched, and the battle began. It had lasted some 
time, when the young rough suddenly threw up his 
hands, and exclaimed, " That's no fair." The other, in 
a moment of irritation, had used a broken knife-blade, 
and a wound in the cheek was the consequence. The 
brave wounded boy made no further complaint, either on 
the ground or elsewhere ; he merely called his troops 
together and went away. The sequel is curious. Hugh 
M'Kenzie, the gallant rough, enlisted into a Highland 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 15 

regiment, and was killed in Spain, not far from the 
officer whose hand had inflicted on him his first 
wound. 

Two years constituted the regular course of training 
at the High School, and Walter went through them — 
not, however, without some interruptions. He outgrew 
his strength, and, in consequence of illness, was more 
than once removed. It was on one of these occasions, 
while residing with his aunt at Kelso, that he made the 
acquaintance of the brothers Ballantyne, with whom, in 
after life, his connection became much more intimate. 
They were the sons of a shopkeeper, and attended the 
grammar-school of the town, at which Walter also — with 
a view to keep his classics from entirely rusting — gave 
occasional attendance. His talent as a raconteur drew 
the Ballantynes towards him, for they were as eager to 
listen as he was ready to narrate ; and there sprang up 
between them that intimacy which seldom fails among 
young people to be created, by something like reverence 
on the one side, and great geniality on the other. The 
Ballantynes were not, however, the only acquaintances 
formed in Kelso which reappear in the after life of the 
subject of this sketch. Not far from the town there 
dwelt an amiable Quaker and his wife, with whose son 
young Scott struck up an intimacy, and from whom he 
received great kindness, especially in the free use which 
they allowed him to make of their well-selected library. 
This worthy couple, Mr. and Mrs. Waldie, stood in after 
years for the originals of Joshua Geddes of Mount Sharon 



16 THE LIFE OF 

and his amiable sister. In like manner Mr. Whale, the 
schoolmaster himself — an absent grotesque being be- 
tween six and seven feet high — reappears, at least par- 
tially, in the character of Dominie Sampson. And so it 
was wherever Scott went. No peculiarity of manner, 
speech, habit of thought or appearance, ever escaped 
him. All oddities whom he encountered, whether among 
men or women, with not a few whose special claims to 
notice lay in more shining qualities than oddity, became 
stereotyped in his imagination ; and were brought forth 
again and turned to use, one by one, as his occasions 
required. 

It was determined to educate Walter for his father's 
profession, and he passed, with this view, from the 
High School to the College. His career in the classes 
which he attended there resembled in all essential points 
his career at school. He made no figure either as a 
classic or a metaphysician. But he persevered in a 
practice long ere this begun, and became an eager col- 
lector, in a small way, of old ballads and stories. It was 
about this time also that he made his first essay in 
original composition. Two copies of verses bearing the 
date 1783 have been preserved, one upon a thunder- 
storm, the other on the setting sun, of which he himself 
gives the following ludicrous account : — " They were 
much approved until a malevolent critic sprang up, in 
the shape of an apothecary's wife, who affirmed that my 
most sweet poetry was copied from an old magazine. I 
never forgave the imputation, and even now I acknow- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 17 

ledge some resentment against the woman's memory. 
She indeed accused me unjustly, when she said I had 
stolen my poem ready-made ; but as I had, like most 
premature poets, copied all the words and ideas of which 
my verses consisted, she was so far right. I made one 
or two faint attempts at verse -making after I had 
undergone this sort of daw-plucking ; but some friend 
or other always advised me to put my verses into the 
fire ; and, like Dorax in the play, I submitted, though 
with a swelling heart." 

Of Walter's antiquarian and poetic propensities the 
worthy writer, his father, either knew nothing or pre- 
tended to know nothing. A stern Presbyterian and 
Calvinist, he affected to hold all light literature in 
abhorrence. Yet, Whig and Presbyterian as he was, he 
reckoned among his clients and kinsmen many repre- 
sentatives of old Jacobite families, with whom, in the 
course of business, his son came a good deal into con- 
tact. So also at the house of his uncle, Dr. Eutherfurd, 
Scott met from time to time, and conversed with some of 
the most eminent men of the day. On the whole, how- 
ever, we are led to the conclusion that Sir Walter, in the 
interval between childhood and early manhood, had very 
little opportunity of becoming acquainted with what is 
commonly called society. His father, whether from 
natural shyness or overcharged principle, seems to have 
held aloof from convivial gatherings. It is certain that 
he rarely invited any one to his table. Hence Walter's 
early intimacies seem to have lain chiefly among writers' 

c 



18 



THE LIFE OF 



clerks and apprentices. We gather also, from hints 
dropped here and there in Mr. Lockhart's narrative, that 
even in the article of dress the young Scotts were a 
good deal neglected. This is the more to be wondered 
at, since Mrs. Scott is represented by all who knew her 




MR. SCOTT'S HOUSE, GEORGE SQUARE. 

to have been a woman of cultivated mind and elegant 
tastes. " She had," says one of Lockhart's correspond- 
ents, " a turn for literature quite uncommon among the 
ladies of the time." She encouraged him in his passion 
for Shakespeare, and looked pleasantly on, when, after 
the lessons were disposed of, her children and some of 
their young friends got up private theatricals in the 
dining-room. On all these occasions Walter, we are 






SIK WALTER SCOTT. 19 

told, was the manager. One of the favourite pieces 
represented was Jane Shore, in which he played Hastings 
and his sister Alicia. In Eichard the Third, also, he took 
the part of the Duke of Gloucester, observing that " the 
limp would do as well as the hump." 

Speaking of the personal habits and social status of 
Walter Scott's father, it will not perhaps be without 
interest to the reader, especially as illustrating what may 
be called the difficulties of the times in which he lived, 
if we extract from the larger edition of Mr. Lockhart's 
Biography an anecdote which Sir Walter often repeated, 
and on which he seemed to dwell with particular 
satisfaction. The writer was, be it remembered, a 
Presbyterian in religion, and, by profession at least, a 
Whig in politics. He had, however, among his clients, 
as has just been stated, many Jacobites and Episco- 
palians ; and of their interests he appears to have been 
at least as jealously careful as of the interests of those 
whose religious and political principles coincided with his 
own. " Mrs. Scott's curiosity," it appears, " was strongly 
excited one autumn by the regular appearance, at a cer- 
tain hour every evening, of a sedan chair, to deposit a 
person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was imme- 
diately ushered into her husband's private room, and 
commonly remained with him there until long after 
the usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr. Scott 
answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness which 
irritated the lady's feelings more and more, until at 
last she could bear the thing no longer, but one evening, 



20 THE LIFE OF 

just as she heard the bell ring as for the stranger s chair 
to carry him off, she made her appearance within the 
forbidden parlour, with a salver in her hand, observing, 
that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long that 
they would be the better of a dish of tea, and had ven- 
tured accordingly to bring some for their acceptance. 
The stranger, a person of distinguished appearance and 
richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup ; 
but her husband knit his brows, and refused, very 
coldly, to partake the refreshment. A moment after- 
wards the visitor withdrew ; and Mr. Scott, lifting up 
the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty 
on the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. The 
lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to silence by 
her husband's saying, ' I can forgive your little curiosity, 
madam; but you must pay the penalty. I may admit 
into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly 
unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither 
lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray's of 
Broughton.' " 

Mr. Murray of Broughton was the unhappy man 
who, after attending Prince Charles Edward as his secre- 
tary throughout the greater part of his expedition, stooped 
so low as to redeem his own life and fortune by becom- 
ing evidence against the noblest of his late master's 
adherents. When confronted with Sir John Douglas 
of Kilhead (ancestor of the Marquis of Queensberry) 
before the Privy Council in St. James's, the prisoner was 
asked, "Do you know this witness ?" " Not I," answered 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 21 

Douglas, " I once knew a person who bore the designa- 
tion of Murray of Broughton, but that was a gentleman 
and a man of honour, and one that could hold up his 
head." 

There can be no doubt, as it seems to us, that the 
Whig lawyer who thus disposed of the cup out of which 
Murray of Broughton had drunk, was in heart and soul, 
as well as by lineage, a gentleman. The saucer that sur- 
vived the destruction of the cup, young Walter found 
means to appropriate ; and we rather think that it took its 
place in after years among the curiosities at Abbotsford. 

We find Walter again smitten down with illness, 
soon after he had entered College. On this occasion he 
burst a blood-vessel, and was compelled for many months 
to remain in a recumbent position, fed on pulse, and 
exposed to as much cold as he could bear. He sub- 
mitted without a murmur to this severe discipline, and 
found consolation in poetry, romance, and the enthusiasm 
of young friendship. The bed on which he lay was piled 
with a constant succession of works of fiction ; and John 
Irving, his companion from the earliest of his school- 
days, spent hour after hour beside him. His recovery 
was completed by a second visit to Kelso, where his 
uncle, Captain Bobert Scott, owned a pleasant villa. 
" With this illness," says Scott in his autobiography, " I 
bade farewell, both to disease and medicine. . . My 
frame became gradually hardened with my constitution, 
and being both tall and muscular, I was rather dis- 
figured than disabled by my lameness. This personal 



22 



THE LIFE OF 




KELSO FROM THE TWEED. 



disadvantage did not prevent me from taking much 
exercise on horseback and making long journeys on foot, 
in the course of which I often walked from twenty to 
thirty miles a day." Accordingly, when the College 
session of 1785-6 opened, he was able to resume his 
studies. But the time was come for beginning the actual 
business of life, and on the 15th of May 1786 the articles 
of apprenticeship to his father were signed. This cir- 
cumstance so far innovated upon his habits that he was 
constrained to devote a portion of his time every day to 
the work of the office. But there was in this no real 
hardship to him. On the contrary, it made him a ready 
penman ; and as writers' apprentices are paid a small 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 23 

premium on every paper which they copy, he earned 
enough to gratify more than ever he had previously been 
able to do the ruling passion of his nature. Every shil- 
ling which rewarded his industry was laid out in the 
purchase of books, and poetry and romance became 
more and more interwoven with his nature. Among 
these purchases Even's Ballads and Mickle's Cumnor 
Hall, seem to have especially delighted him ; and the 
pleasure derived from the latter, at least, never died out. 
" After the labours of the day," says Mr. Irving, " we 
often walked to the Meadows (a large field intersected 
by formal alleys of trees, adjoining George Square), 
especially in the moonlight nights ; and he seemed 
never weary of repeating the first stanza :— 

( The dews of summer night did fall, 
The moon, sweet regent of the sky, 
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall, 

And many an oak that grew thereby.' n 

That the impression made by this poem was as clear 
as it was enduring, we have the best proof in the future 
composition of Kenilworth ; indeed, it was only by 
a sort of accident that to that grand story — for such it 
is, with all faults — the title of Cumnor Hall was not 
given. 

Having referred to Mr. Irving, we may here mention 
that throughout the whole of their earlier career that 
gentleman and Walter Scott were inseparable, though in 
after years they did not see much of each other. There 
was great similarity of taste between the young men. 



24 



THE LIFE OF 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 25 

They both delighted in legends and romances. They 
were both prone to indulge the imaginative faculty. 
They even studied together Italian and Spanish, in 
order that they might the better enjoy the charming 
tales of Tasso, Ariosto, and Cervantes. With young 
Scott, however, it was in Italian and Spanish — as it had 
been in Latin, and as it afterwards became in German — 
he never took the trouble to make himself an accurate 
scholar. Enough for him if he could extract the mean- 
ing, or take in the beauties of his author. Tor whether 
it were an ancient or a modern book which came in his 
way — whether an English, an Italian, a Spanish, a Ger- 
man, or a Latin classic — his sole object in perusing it 
was to pick out from it the ideas which recommended 
themselves to his taste or judgment. In no single in- 
stance did he dream of making it a means of ascertaining, 
far less of settling, the niceties of idiom or of grammar. 
We ha^e specified these five tongues, omitting Greek 
altogether, for this obvious reason — that Scott never 
mastered the grammar of that noble language, and had 
latterly forgotten the very letters. 

Imaginative lads are usually as peculiar in the selec- 
tion of their favourite haunts as in the choice of their 
favourite pursuits. It was the practice of Walter and 
his friend Irving to walk sometimes as far as the Salis- 
bury Crags, and, choosing out some spot on the face of 
the hill all but inaccessible, to climb up thither, and 
there sit for hours, either reading together one of the 
romances with which the circulating library had supplied 



26 THE LIFE OF 

them, or telling to each other tales, usually of knight- 
errantry, which had no ending. This habit of wandering 
grew upon Scott to such an extent, that he occasionally 
strayed so far, or lost himself so completely, as to be 
unable to regain his home at the time when he was 
expected. At first his parents suffered a good deal of 
uneasiness on his account. But the practice became 
by and by so frequent that by degrees they grew 
accustomed to it, and kept their minds comparatively 
easy, even when, as sometimes occurred, he remained 
abroad all night. 

The most agreeable of Walter's duties while appren- 
ticed to his father were those which carried him from 
time to time into the rural districts where some of Mr. 
Scott's clients lived. It was thus that he repeatedly 
visited the Border counties, penetrating sometimes as far 
as the remote valleys of the Cheviots. He studied 
character there almost without knowing it, and began 
that collection of songs and ballads which grew into the 
work which first fixed on him the attention of the public. 
Under similar circumstances he made his earliest ac- 
quaintance with the Highlands. There, too, his imagi- 
nation found ample food on which to ruminate, and the 
results, when matured, came forth in poetry and romance. 
Meanwhile, his own inner nature was powerfully affected 
by what he saw and heard. Marching at the head of an 
armed party, in order to execute some process of horning, 
he lived, as he threaded the defile of the Trossachs, with 
Eob Eoy and Boderick Dhu. The stories told to him 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 27 

by Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle entered into his 
soul, and became a portion of his being. That fine 
specimen of a Jacobite gentleman, who survived to 
recount, in serene and vigorous old age, his active ex- 
periences in the insurrections both of 1715 and 1745, 
seems early to have attracted Scott's attention and ad- 
miration. He saw him in arms in September 1779, 
when Paul Jones threatened a descent upon Edinburgh, 
and heard him exult in the prospect of drawing his 
claymore once more before he died. Invernahyle, as 
Scott adds, was the only person who appeared to retain 
the use of his cool senses at the period of that disgrace- 
ful alarm, and offered the magistrates to collect as many 
Highlanders as would suffice for cutting off any part 
of the pirate's crew that might venture in quest of 
plunder into a city full of high houses and narrow lanes, 
and in every way well calculated for defence. The eager 
delight with which the youthful apprentice listened to 
the tales of this old man's early days produced an in- 
vitation to his residence among the mountains ; and to 
these excursions were devoted the few weeks of an 
autumnal vacation, either in 1786 or 1787, it does not 
exactly appear which. 

Young men intended for the humbler branch of the 
legal profession in Scotland are, equally with aspirants 
for the advocate's gown, required to attend a course of 
lectures in the University on Civil Law. In 1788 
Scott entered the Civil Law class, and the incident 
wrought a wondrous change in his position and pro- 



28 THE LIFE OF 

spects. It renewed for him some desirable acquaintances 
which he had formed at the High School, and enabled 
him to contract others not less to his mind. These 
latter belonged exclusively to the class of youths whom, 
in Redgauntlet, he designates the " Scottish noblesse de la 
Robe." They comprised, among others, William Clerk 
of Eldon, George Abercrombie (afterwards Lord Aber- 
crombie), Sir Patrick Murray of Ochtertyre, John James 
Edmonstone of Newton, Patrick Murray of Simprun, 
and George Cranstoun, later in life Lord Corehouse. 
All of these, besides being well connected, were young 
men of personal mark, clever, intelligent, bent on 
winning distinction, free and engaging in their manners, 
and strictly honourable. Scott, though at first his 
appearance told against him, soon broke down by the 
power and diversity of his talents whatever barrier of 
restraint stood at the outset between them. Mr. Clerk, 
for example, has left the statement upon record that he 
was struck, on the first day of Scott's entrance into the 
Civil Law class-room, with something odd, yet remark- 
able, in the young man's appearance. What that some- 
thing was, he could not quite recall ; but he remembered 
telling his companions some time afterwards, that he 
thought he looked like a hautboy player. But once the 
ice was thawed, all recollection of the hautboy player 
melted with it ; and the uncouth lad, with his lame 
leg and corduroy smallclothes, was accepted freely and 
gratefully as one of themselves. The liveliness of his 
conversation, the strange variety of his knowledge, and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 29 

above all, perhaps, the portentous tenacity of his 
memory, rivetted more and more the attention of the 
clique into which he was in due time admitted — and 
prone as they all were to habits, in which he came not 
behind the foremost of them, the good opinion thereby 
created never suffered eclipse. Whether it were at con- 
vivial meetings, or in feats of personal activity and 
prowess, he showed himself, on all occasions, well able 
to hold his own. He became, indeed, ere long, the 
centre round which the entire circle gathered. 

There were other bonds of union between Scott and 
his new acquaintances than those enumerated above. 
They were all fond of making long excursions on foot ; 
so was he, and he taught them to combine with field 
sports a love of scenery, especially if it were connected 
with traditions of old romance. They accordingly ex- 
plored under his guidance all the ruined castles and 
abbeys within a circuit of many miles round the capital, 
and found him the best of cicerones. They had adopted, 
likewise, the prevalent tastes of the day, and discussed 
literary and scientific subjects with characteristic bold- 
ness. For our readers must remember that we are 
speaking of a time when the Scottish capital was, or 
was believed by her citizens to be, at the head of the 
literature and science of the world. Eeid had just 
vacated the chair of metaphysics, that he might be suc- 
ceeded by Dugald Stewart. Professor Eobison stood 
deservedly high as a mathematician and a naturalist. 
Adam Smith, though he taught in Glasgow, passed as 



30 THE LIFE OF 

much of his time as possible in Edinburgh. Hume and 
Eobertson were both there ; so were Monboddo and 
Ferguson ; while Home, the author of Douglas, and 
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, contributed, each 
after his own fashion, to make up that galaxy of light 
by which the rest of the world was supposed to be 
dazzled. The young men composing the set of which 
Scott was a member, though they could not pretend to 
vie with these planets of the first magnitude, were am- 
bitious of moving in the same orbit. They got up a 
debating club, which they called the Literary Society, 
and met from time to time to consider points of history, 
law, general literature, and antiquarian research. In 
the discussion of all these subjects Scott showed him- 
self eminently well informed. He was already a dabbler 
in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse Sagas, besides being well 
versed in Fordun, in Wynton, and the Scottish chroniclers 
in general ; indeed, so marked was his superiority in 
these respects over his associates, that they conferred 
upon him the sobriquet of "Duns Scotus." It is a re- 
markable fact, however, that his speeches or addresses, 
though full of knowledge, were by no means brilliant. 
Indeed Scott, though confessedly one of the most 
agreeable talkers that ever lived, had very little .of the 
orator about him. Even later in life, when his fame 
pervaded Europe, and the consciousness of his proper 
place in the world might have given him confidence, 
this distrust of his own power as a speaker continued 
to hang about him ; nor was it, except on rare occasions, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



31 



when his feelings happened to be strongly worked upon, 
that he ever expressed himself eloquently. 

Besides this debating club, there was another, 
which appears to have _H-_-__ 

been rather social than 
literary, and to have 
consisted of the elite of 
that somewhat miscel- 
laneous body of which 
the literary society was 
composed. Of that, 
also, Scott became a 
member. It held its 
meetings every Friday 
evening in a room 
in Carrubbers Close, 
whence an adjourn- 
ment usually took place 
for supper to an oyster 
tavern in the neigh- 
bourhood. There " high 
jinks," such as are de- 
scribed in Guy Man- 
nering, went on. The 
Club gradually changed 
its character, however, as the members grew older, and 
merged at last into an annual dinner, from which, during 
thirty years, Scott made a point of never absenting 
himself. 




CLHRIHUGH S TAVERN : WRITERS COURT. 



32 THE LIFE OF 

Such associations as these had a twofold effect upon 
Walter Scott. They more and more gave dominance 
to the half-real, half-ideal, views of life which were 
natural to him ; and they disgusted him with that 
branch of the legal profession for which he was in- 
tended. His father wisely and considerately abstained 
from pressing him on the subject, and Walter, relinquish- 
ing to his younger brother his share in the writer's 
business, became, in 1792, an advocate — or, as we would 
say in the south, was called to the bar. 

Before he assumed the advocate's robe, Scott had 
been elected into the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. 
It was, and we believe still continues to be, like the 
literary society of the juniors spoken of elsewhere, a 
sort of Club, into which gentlemen about to put on the 
gown are admitted ; and in which many, after they 
have become advocates, continue, for lack of more lucra- 
tive employment, to exercise themselves in the arts of 
eloquence and debate. For this Society he wrote 
several essays, and entered so heartily into its proceed- 
ings, that, soon after becoming a member, he was 
nominated Secretary and Treasurer. There he made, 
among other valuable acquaintances — that of Jeffrey — 
between whom and himself a warm friendship sprang 
up, which neither differences in political opinion, nor 
the warmth and earnestness with which each held his 
own, ever seriously interrupted. 

Whether or no Walter Scott, had he laid himself 
out for briefs, would have become first a successful 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 33 

advocate, and, by and by, a judge, is a question which 
concerns us little to ask, and still less to answer. He 
never did lay himself out for briefs ; the tastes and 
habits which he contracted in childhood abode with and 
controlled him through all his after years. He used 
whatever legal knowledge he acquired, as he used all 
his other knowledge, for one purpose. The law became 
as much idealised to him as were border ballads and 
Scandinavian Sagas. He estimated, perhaps above its 
real value, his social status as an advocate, and swept 
the Outer Court, like others of his class, day by day 
looking for business. But he was infinitely more in his 
element joking and telling stories on the Mountain, than 
conducting or trying to conduct a case before the judges* 
So also, when the Courts rose, he hurried away to the 
Border, or passed from house to house, among the country 
residences of his allies, combining amusement with 
antiquarian research. Here is the account which he 
gives of himself three : 
had been assumed : — 



gives of himself three months after the advocate's gown 



"Rosebank, 10th Sept. 1792. 
" Dear Willie [Clerk], 

. . . . "lam lounging about the country here, to 
speak sincerely, as idle as the day is long. Two com- 

* The Mountain was a particular corner in the Outer House, 
where barristers without briefs congregated, and amused each 
other and all who came near them with witty talk. Scott soon 
became as remarkable in this place, as he had been at the High. 
School, for his stories. 



34 THE LIFE OF 

panions of mine, brothers of Mr. Walker of Wooden, 
having come to this country, we have renewed a great 
intimacy. As they live directly on the opposite bank 
of the river [the Tweed], we have signals agreed upon 
by which we concert a plan of operations for the day. 
They are both officers and very intelligent young fellows, 
and, what is of some consequence, have a brace of fine 
greyhounds. Yesterday we killed seven hares, so you 
may see how plenty the game is with us. I have turned 
a keen duck-shooter, though my success is not very 
great ; and when wading through the marshes upon this 
errand, accoutred with the long gun, a jacket, musquito 
trowsers, and a rough cap, I might well pass for one of 
my redoubted moss-trooper progenitors, Walter Fire-the- 
braes, or rather Willie-with-the-bolt-foot. For other 
outdoor amusement, I have constructed a seat in a large 
tree which stretches its branches horizontally over the 
Tweed. This is a favourite situation of mine for reading, 
especially on a day like this, when the west wind rocks 
the branches on which I am perched, and the river rolls 
its waves below me of a turbid blood colour. I have, 
moreover, cut an embrasure through which I can fire 
upon the gulls, herons, or cormorants, as they fly scream- 
ing past my nest. To crown all, I have carved an inscrip- 
tion on it, in the ancient runic taste." 

We have alluded elsewhere to Scott's habit of 
dabbling in various modern languages, for it cannot be 
said with truth that he ever made himself critically 
master of one. In 1792 he joined a class for the study 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 35 

of German. The attention of the educated youths of 
Edinburgh had been drawn to that noble tongue, first by 
a paper read before the Eoyal Society by the author of 
The Man of Feeling, and next by the publication of 
Lord Woodhouselee's version of Schiller's Robbers. 

Scott did with German as he had done with French, 
Spanish, and Italian, qualified himself thoroughly to 
grasp the subject and appreciate the beauties of his 
author, without, however, taking the trouble to go 
further. By and by he began to translate, and in 1795 
produced the most spirited, if not the most correct 
version, of Burger's Zeonore, that we have in the 
English language. With this, which may be called the 
first of his literary efforts, is mixed up an incident in his 
personal history, which, in more ways than one, may be 
said to have operated a great change in his habits of 
thought and action. The story is this : — 

For some time after he had begun to associate ex- 
clusively with the members of the Club and the Specu- 
lative Society, Scott continued to be as careless, not to " 
say slovenly, in his attire, as he used to be when a 
school-boy and a writer's apprentice. All at once his 
habits changed in this respect, and he became a well- 
dressed young man — a squire, as his companions pro- 
nounced him, of Dames. He had fallen in love with a 
young lady whom he encountered at the church door, 
and conveyed to her own home, sheltered from the rain 
by his umbrella. His family and hers were not on any 
terms of intimacy. Mr. Scott happened, indeed, to be 



36 THE LIFE OF 

her father's solicitor ; but the man of business did not 
pretend, probably did not desire, to be reckoned among 
the familiars of his client, and, which perhaps had as 
much weight with him as any other point to be con- 
sidered, he knew that his son's means were inadequate 
to support the lady in the style to which she had been 
accustomed. So honourably sensitive on this latter 
head was the Writer, that he no sooner observed how 
matters were tending with the young people, than he 
considered himself bound to put the lady's father on his 
guard. The warning was well received and made light 
of, and the acquaintance went on, more especially as 
young Scott made his way, as he soon afterwards did, 
into the set of which the young lady's brother was a 
member. Hence it came to pass that he met the young 
lady herself frequently, not in Edinburgh only, but in 
her own and other country houses, and that she, being 
addicted to poetry and romance, received him as often 
as he came frankly, and kindly. 

This sort of intimacy was kept up for years — through- 
out the whole interval, indeed, between 1792 and 1796 ; 
and Scott regarding it as he regarded all things else, 
through the medium of his own imagination, nattered 
himself that his passion was reciprocated. No word 
escaped him, however, to the lady herself, either in conver- 
sation or writing, indicative of the state of his own feelings. 
He resembled in this respect the most bashful of the bash- 
ful lovers described in his novels. He told his secret to 
many of his friends, and among others to Miss Cranstoun, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 37 

afterwards Countess of Purgstall, but to the object of bis 
devotion be said notbing. It is worthy of remark, how- 
ever, that neither the passion itself, nor the secrecy in 
which it was nourished, exercised the slightest untoward 
influence over his character. As first love is apt to do 
with such as he, it deepened in him the poetic tempera- 
ment ; but it made him neither less industrious nor less 
manly. The interval between 1792 and 1796 was, it 
will be remembered, one of great political agitation in 
Scotland. The rebound of the French revolution had 
been felt there as much as in other European countries, 
and society divided itself into two classes — the friends 
of order and the champions of confusion. Scott, as was 
to be expected, threw himself heart and soul into the 
former category. He took a prominent part in many a 
row which had something else than the pleasure of 
breaking heads for its object. As a special constable he 
drove riotous mobs from the streets, just as in his 
private capacity he helped to clear the theatre of Irish 
and other democrats who refused to uncover when " God 
Save the King" was sung. And having done these 
things he returned with increased zest to his business in 
court, his private studies, and the society of his friends. 
We find him, for example, in 1793, defending in the 
General Assembly a minister charged before that court 
with habitual drunkenness and indecency. He failed to 
bring off his client, whose character seems to have been 
indefensible. But he contrived, in hunting for evidence, 
through the scenery of Guy Mannering, to lay up 



38 THE LIFE OF 

innumerable pictures, and to find various names, 
among others that of MacGuffog, of which excellent 
use was made in due season. Next he sets off 
with Adam Ferguson, a class-fellow in the High 
School, and a friend for life, on a tour through 
some of the finest districts in Stirlingshire, Perth- 
shire, and Forfarshire. In the course of this tour 
he halts in succession at Tullibody, Newton, Cam- 
busmore, Craighall, and Meigle. Each supplies 
him with materials for future use. "From Mr. Aber- 
crombie of Tullibody, the father of Sir Ealph, and the 
grandfather of his own friend of the Mountain, Mr. 
afterwards Lord Abercrombie, he received an account 
of certain adventures in which that gentleman took 
part, and which we find detailed at length in the narra- 
tive of the Baron of Bradwardine's dealings with his 
troublesome neighbours, including the visit to the 
cavern of Donald Bean Lean, with all its accompani- 
ments. At Newton,* a villa on the banks of the 
Teith, the grounds of which run up to the stately 
ruins of Doune Castle, he heard how John Home, 
and other prisoners to the Highland army, escaped 
from that fortalice. He did not forget the story when 
he sat down to write Waverley. From Cambusmore 
he made himself familiar with every rood of the land- 

* Newton has changed, since those days, both its name and 
its ownership. It is the property of John Campbell, Esq., by 
whom the present beautiful chateau was built ; and has become 
luverardoch. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 39 

scape through which the scenes in the Lady of the 
Lake are carried ; — not excepting those which are 
glanced at, as Eitz-James pursues his fiery ride from 
the banks of Loch Vennachar, after the duel with 
Boderick Dhu, to Stirling Castle. Craighall, the seat 
of the Battrays, supplemented by a feature or two 
from Bruntsfield House and Bavelstone, became for him 
Tully-Veolan ; and Meigle brought him into contact 
with more than one Balmawhapple, as well as with Old 
Mortality, whom he found in the flesh, scraping, under 
the more familiar name of Peter Paterson, the moss 
from the tombs of the martyrs, in the churchyard of 
Dunnottar. Thus, in town and country, at his desk, or 
breathing the pure air of heaven, his mind appears 
to have been continually busy, and busy in such a way 
as to render the world of living men a thousand times 
less real to him than the world which he was 
creating. 

Doubtless it was, to some extent at least, the spirit 
of chivalry which was in him, that induced him about 
this time to take a leading part in getting up a regiment 
of yeomanry cavalry in the Lothians. Already England 
was threatened with invasion, and corps of volunteer 
infantry turned out everywhere. Edinburgh itself 
produced a most efficient battalion, in which barristers 
served as privates, and judges as field-officers. Scott's 
lameness prevented his enrolling himself in that 
battalion, as his brothers had done. But finding an 
example set by the Londoners, he moved the Duke of 



40 THE LIFE OF 

Buccleuch, the Lieutenant of the county, to apply for 
permission to embody some squadrons of light horse ; 
and the permission being granted, Scott at once took 
service with that force in the capacity of Lieutenant and 
Quartermaster. His strong black charger, which he 
named Leonore, was ridden in many a day's training on 
Portobello sands, not without a yearning desire on the 
part of the rider that he might one day be enabled to 
lead a charge against a real enemy. 




scott's volunteer helmet. 



We spoke, a short time ago, of the translation of 
the poem after which the charger was named. It was 
circulated in MS. among the literary circles of Edin- 
burgh, and gained for the author immense applause. 
All into whose hands it passed, pronounced it to be 
infinitely superior to the version of Mr. Taylor of 
Norwich ; which Miss Aiken, afterwards Mrs. Barbauld, 
had brought in MS. to Scotland, and read aloud to a 
crowded audience in the house of Dugald Stewart. 

" He began the task," says Mr. Lockhart, " one night 
after supper, and did not retire to bed until he had 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 41 

finished it, having by that time worked himself into a 
state of excitement, which set sleep at defiance. Next 
morning, before breakfast he carried his MS. to Miss 
Cranstoun, the sister of his friend George Cranstoun (she 
was afterwards Countess of Purgstall), who was not only 
delighted but astonished, for I have seen a letter of hers 
to a mutual friend in the country, in which she says — 
'Upon my word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a 
poet — something of a cross, I think, between Burns and 
Gray.' The same day he read it, also, to his friend Sir 
Alexander Wood, who retains a vivid recollection of the 
high strain of enthusiasm into which he had been excited 
by dwelling on the wild unearthly imagery of the 
German bard. ' He read it over to me, ' says Sir 
Alexander, ' in a very slow and solemn tone, and after 
we had said a few words about its merits, continued to 
look into the fire, silent and musing for some minutes, 
until he at length burst out with ' I wish to heaven I 
could get a skull and two crossbones." Wood said, that 
if he would accompany him to the house of John Bell, 
the celebrated surgeon, he had no doubt this wish could 
be gratified. They went thither, accordingly, on the 
instant. Mr. Bell (who was a great humourist), smiled 
on hearing the object of their visit, and pointing to a 
closet at the corner of his library, bade Walter enter 
and choose. From a well-furnished museum of 
mortality, he selected forthwith, what seemed to him, 
the handsomest skull and pair of cross-bones it con- 
tained, and, wrapping them in his handkerchief, carried 



42 THE LIFE OF 

the formidable bundle home to George Square. The 
trophies were immediately mounted on the top of his 
little bookcase, and when Wood visited him, after many 
years' absence from the country, he found them in 
possession of a similar position in his dressing-room at 
Abbotsford." 

Thus far the tide of fortune may be said to have 
rolled with a steady current in Scott's favour. He was 
in fair practice at the bar, considering his age and 
standing. The advocates had taken such a fancy to 
him that they appointed him one of the librarians of 
their noble library. He was rapidly establishing a good 
name, as a man of genius and great research. He was a 
universal favourite. He was about to experience his 
first sorrow, and it was a bitter one. Encouraged in 
part by the success of his translation, in part by the 
partial assurances of his friend Miss Cranstoun, ' he 
made up his mind to tell his tale of love ; and finding 
himself under the same roof with the object of his 
affections, he besought her to give him her heart, and 
was rejected. She had no heart to give. Another had 
it in his keeping, and in due time she gave her hand to 
his rival. The young lady was Miss Margaret Stuart, 
daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches of 
Invermay. Her husband, Sir William Forbes of Pit- 
sligo, Bart., was already one of Scott's fast friends, and, 
throughout the anxieties and distresses of 1826-27, 
rendered him the most important services. It would be 
ungenerous, if it were possible, to depict Scott's feelings, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 43 

when the hopes which through so many years he had 
cherished, were crushed in a moment. This much, how- 
ever, we are bound to say, that he overmastered them 
with a power of will which is marvellous ; and carrying 
in his soul a grief which endured to the end, he never 
allowed it — no, not even for a day — to stand between 
him and the manly exercise of his faculties. He 
quitted the house, made his way into Perthshire, and 
threw himself, with apparently increased zeal, into the 
researches which were to him at once business and re- 
creation ; while, strange to say, only one short poem by 
his hand survives to tell that such an incident ever befell 
him. Let us not, however, forget to point out that the 
heroines in the Lay, Bokeby, and Beclgauntlet, are all 
built upon one model. They are all deeply loved, 
like Margaret Stuart of Invermay, where they can 
make no return ; they are but paintings from the same 
original. 

The translation of Leonore, though executed in 
1794, was not published till two years afterwards. 
Under the pressure of disappointment, Scott took eagerly 
to composition, and in October 1796 he made his first 
appearance as an author, printing in a handsome quarto 
volume, this, with another of Burger's ballads, The 
Wild Huntsman. In the publication of this work he 
was greatly assisted by Mrs. Scott of Harden, the 
daughter of Count Bruhl, of Mortkerchen, long Saxon 
Minister at the Court of St. James's, who appears to 
have been a very charming, as she was undoubtedly a 



44 THE LIFE OF 

highly accomplished and beautiful woman. To her, 
soon after her arrival at Merton, Walter got introduced, 
and seeing under his then somewhat awkward exterior 
marks of high genius, she at once took him by the hand, 
and proved in many ways serviceable to him. 

The translation, though much and deservedly 
admired, proved a failure as a mercantile adventure. 
Many other versions of the same poems were in the 
market, and Scott's, though undoubtedly not inferior to 
the best, never exhausted a single edition. This in no 
degree daunted his courage or damped his energy. He 
resumed his search after Border legends and Border 
ballads, and succeeded by degrees in acquiring a vast 
and valuable amount of both. He was in the full 
swing of this effort, which was relieved now with attend- 
ance in the Parliament House, now with cavalry 
exercises, when he saw for the first time, and became 
at once attracted by, the lady whom not long afterwards 
he made his wife. The story of this courtship would be 
hard to understand, did not all experience vouch for the 
fact that the heart which suffers most under a disap- 
pointment in its affections turns with the readiest 
instinct to some other object for relief. So at least it 
certainly proved in Scott's case, for within less than 
a year after receiving his wound he went with his 
brother and Adam Ferguson to the little Border water- 
ing-place of Gilsland, and encountered there a lady on 
horseback, who rode well, sat gracefully, and appeared 
to be very beautiful. The three young men were 






SIR WALTER SCOTT. 45 

equally struck, and they managed the same night to 
get introduced to her at a ball. She proved to be 
a Miss Carpenter or Charpentier, the daughter of 
a widow lady, whose husband, a French employe, 
had died during the Eevolution, after sending his 
family to England. The guardian of this lady and 
of her brother, who went to India in the civil service, 
was the Marquis of Downshire. The Marquis had 
somehow become the creditor of M. Charpentier to an 
amount which was rather uncertain, further than that 
Miss Carpenter, when Scott met her, was understood to 
be the heiress of a moderate independence, which 
she was to receive provided she married with her 
guardian's consent. Scott had known her barely a 
month or six weeks when he proposed. The Marquis 
was written to and approved, and on the 24th December 
1797 the young couple were married in the parish church 
of St, Mary, Carlisle. 

Such was the abrupt beginning of a union which 
lasted through many years ; and which, in spite of the 
most marked dissimilarity of tastes between husband 
and wife, proved, upon the whole, to be a happy one. 
It seems to have been peculiarly happy at the outset. 
Scott carried his bride to lodgings while a house in Castle 
Street was preparing for them, and introduced her to 
his family and friends. The family soon took to her, 
with one exception. His friends, and especially the 
Club, were charmed with her. She made a capital 
hostess at his small evening parties, and would have 



46 



THE LIFE OF 



been delighted to go with him to the play every night 
in the week. And here we may observe, once for all, 
that for dramatic performances, and the companionship 
of clever actors, Scott had the keenest relish. Tew men 




THE COTTAGE AT LASSWADE. 

saw more of him or were deeper in his confidence than 
Daniel Terry. The Siddonses, male and female, were 
his friends, and Matthews shared his hospitality on 
every possible occasion. But Scott believed himself to 
be now in a position to indulge that love of the country 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 47 

and its pleasures which was inherent in him. Beserving 
his house in Castle Street for a town residence during 
term time, he hired a cottage near Lasswade, which he 
fitted up with much taste, and made very comfortable. 
It may be doubted whether his enjoyment of life was 
ever more pure, more innocent, or more rational, than 
during the early years of his residence there. Lasswade 
stands in the midst of scenery than which few districts 
in the lowlands of Scotland can present anything more 
attractive. It is surrounded at short distances by gen- 
tlemen's seats, which were in those days inhabited 
among others by the Duke of Buccleuch, the grandfather 
of the present Duke; by Lord Melville, the father of 
Scott's friends, Bobert and William Dundas ; by the 
Man of Feeling, Mr. Mackenzie; and by Lord Wood- 
houselee, one of Scott's ancient familiars. All these 
threw' open their doors to receive the rising man of 
genius and his bride, while his own more humble roof 
gave shelter and entertainment to old friends, who seldom 
failed once or twice in every week to visit him from 
Edinburgh. Moreover, at Lasswade he may be con- 
sidered as having for the first time, and in a marked 
manner, surrendered himself to the sway of his ruling 
passion. ' The circumstances were these : — 

Seventy years ago few living writers stood higher in 
public estimation than Matthew Lewis. The Monk was 
then in the zenith of its glory, and of Alonzo the Brave 
and Durandarte critics and connossieurs could not say 
enough. The author of these famous performances came 



48 THE LIFE OF 

to Scotland, and Scott was gratified beyond measure 
with the attentions which Lewis paid him. They met 
in Edinburgh ; they met at Dalkeith. He was Scott's 
guest, and the guest of the yeomanry regiment when it 
turned out for permanent duty at Musselburgh. All 
this was the result of some communications which had 
passed in London between the great litterateur and 
Scott's friend William Erskine, in the course of which 
Erskine gave to Lewis a copy of Scott's version of 
Zeonore to read. Lewis, though robust neither in mind 
nor body, was not a fool. He saw at once the great 
merit of the performance, and being then engaged in 
collecting materials for his Tales of Wonder, he proposed, 
through Erskine, that Scott should become a contributor 
to that work. It was, indeed, the search after legends', 
and after some one capable of treating them as he 
desired, which brought Lewis to Scotland, and Scott 
thus found himself associated with a pigmy of a man, 
who was yet a giant in letters. 

Accepting the proposal, Scott set to work, and in a 
short time was ready with the ballads which he had 
promised. Lewis, however, was not ready, and the pub- 
lication of the Tales of Wonder hung fire. They did 
not, indeed, make their appearance till 1801. This 
chafed Scott a little, which Lewis perceiving, encouraged 
him to go on with the translation of Goethe's Goetz von 
Berlichingen of the Iron Hand, and negotiated the sale 
of it as a separate copyright for £25. Another long 
pause ensued, and Scott eventually fell back into fret- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 49 

fulness, when an accident renewed for him the acquaint- 
ance of James Ballantyne, of whom, as in some sort one 
of his school-fellows at Kelso, we have elsewhere spoken. 
James had become the proprietor as well as the printer 
of a weekly newspaper in Kelso, and hearing that Scott 
was on a visit at Eosebank, he there called upon him. 
His object was to propose that Scott, whose name stood 
high among his friends as a man of talent, should supply 
the Kelso Mail occasionally with a few paragraphs on 
some legal questions of the day. Scott assented, and 
carrying his first article himself to the printing-office, he 
took along with it some of the pieces which he had 
prepared for Lewis's collection. With these, especially 
with the Morlachian fragment after Goethe, Ballantyne 
was delighted, expressing great regret that Lewis's book 
was so slow to make its appearance. The conversation 
went on, and Scott before parting threw out a casual 
observation, that he wondered his old friend did not try 
to get some bookseller's work to keep his types in play 
during the rest of the week. The obvious answer came 
that Ballantyne had no acquaintance with the trade in 
Edinburgh, nor any means of establishing it. " Well," 
said Scott, " you have been praising my little ballads ; 
suppose you print off a dozen copies or so of as many 
as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edinburgh 
acquaintances judge of your skill for themselves ?" The 
suggestion was at once acted upon. Twelve copies of 
Willie and Ellen, as many of the Fire King, the Chase, 

E 



50 THE LIFE OF 

and of a few more, were thrown off, with the title, 
Apology for Tales of Terror. 

This first specimen of a press, afterwards so cele- 
brated, pleased Scott, and he said to Ballantyne, "I have 
been for years collecting old Border ballads, and I think 
I could, with little trouble, put together such a selection 
from them as might make a neat little volume, to sell 
for four or five shillings. I will talk to some of the 
booksellers about it when I get to Edinburgh, and if the 
thing goes on, you shall be the printer." Ballantyne 
highly relished the proposal, and the result of this little 
experiment changed wholly the course of his worldly 
fortunes, as well as of his friend's. 

Scott returned home full of the plan, and was shortly 
afterwards rendered doubly free to follow without mis- 
giving the bent of his own inclinations. The office of 
Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant by the 
death of an early ally of his own, a Mr. Plummer, of 
Middlestead, a scholar and an antiquary, who had 
entered with zeal into all Scott's Border researches. 
The community of tastes between the two men may 
have had some part in suggesting to the Duke of Buc- 
cleuch that a better successor to Mr. Plummer than 
Scott could not be found. Be that as it may, the Duke's 
influence was used to obtain the vacant sheriffship for 
his clansman ; and Lord Melville, with whom then 
rested the distribution of Government patronage in 
Scotland, readily acceded to the Duke's request. Scott, 
be it remembered, was by this time a frequent and wel- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 51 

come guest at the houses of both of these noblemen. 
He had entered, likewise, on terms of friendly intimacy 
with Lord Dalkeith (afterwards Duke Charles of Buc- 
cleuch), and with Lord Montague, then Lord James 
Scott. His claims were further supported by Mr. 
Eobert Dundas, the eldest son of the Minister, and by a 
nephew of the same Lord Melville, William Dundas, 
the Secretary to the Board of Control, and afterwards 
Lord Clerk-Begister of Scotland. The result was that, 
on the 16th of December 1799, he was gazetted to the 
sheriffship, and added thereby just £300 to his annual 
income. 

Easy now in his circumstances, Scott threw himself 
with exceeding ardour into literary pursuits. His was 
not, however, the mind of a mere dreamer or poet ; at 
all events his dreams were at once more vivid, and in 
one sense far more practical, than fill the brains of poets 
in general. He was ambitious of rising to more than 
poetic fame in the world, and the measures for achieving 
that end which occurred to him at this moment were 
most original. He conceived the idea, not alone of 
establishing James Ballantyne as a printer in Edin- 
burgh, but of himself becoming a partner in the con- 
cern. Not that it ever entered into his head to stand out 
before the world in the capacity of a trader. He would 
bring grist to the mill, and keep it working ; but the 
very last thing he desired was that he should be 
recognised as a miller. It would be idle to try this 
policy of his by any common standard of right. Scott 



52 THE LIFE OF 

was no common man. It cannot be said that he looked 
down either upon trade or traders ; for his intimacy 
with the Ballantynes, and afterwards with Constable the 
publisher, was at least as close as with the most aristo- 
cratic of his other friends. But both now, and through- 
out his after career, he shrank as from something which 
would lower him in his own estimation, as Well as in the 
opinion of the world, from being accounted a trader. 
Even the sales of his copyrights, though he managed 
them as was believed with exceeding skill, were always 
alluded to by himself as matters apart and distinct from 
business. Yet there is the clearest evidence to show, 
that from the day when he proposed to Ballantyne to 
remove to Edinburgh, he intended to make common 
cause with that adventurer, and that he' calculated, not 
without some reason, on a great success. 

, " Three branches of printing are quite open in Edin- 
burgh," he writes, " all of which I am well convinced 
you have both the ability and inclination to unite in 
your own person. The first is that of an editor of a 
newspaper, which shall contain something of a uniform 
historical deduction of events distinct from the ferrago 
of detached and unconnected plagiarisms from ..the Lon- 
don paragraphs of The Sun. Perhaps it might be pos- 
sible (and Gillon* has promised to make. inquiry about 
it) to treat with the proprietors of some established 

* A writer in Edinburgh, a man of great natural ability, of whose 
judgment Scott entertained a high opinion, but whom habits of intem- 
perance quite broke down. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 53 

paper — suppose the Caledonian Mercury — and we would 
both struggle to obtain for it more celebrity. To this 
might be added a Monthly Magazine and Caledonian 
Annual Kegister, if you will ; for both of which, with 
the excellent literary assistance which Edinburgh at 
present affords, there is a fair opening. The next object 
would naturally be the execution of Session papers, the 
best paid work which a printer undertakes, and of which 
I dare say, you would soon have a considerable share ; 
for as you make it your business to superintend the 
proofs yourself, your education and ability would ensure 
your employers against the gross and provoking blunders 
which the poor composers are often obliged to submit 
to. The publication of works, either ancient or modern, 
opens a third fair field for ambition. The only gentle- 
man who attempts anything in that way is in very bad 
health, nor can I, at any rate, compliment either the 
accuracy or the execution of his press. I believe it is 
well understood, that with equal attention an Edinburgh 
press would have superior advantages even to those of 
the Metropolis." 

This is a bold plan, and the means of carrying it 
into effect are scarcely less so. 

" In the meanwhile, the Kelso Mail might be so 
arranged as to be still a source of some advantage to 
you ; and I dare say, if wanted, pecuniary assistance 
might be procured to assist you, at the outset, either 
upon terms of share or otherwise." 

It w T as clearly of pecuniary assistance on terms of 



54 THE LIFE OF 

share, that Scott was already thinking ; nor did any 
great while elapse ere steps were taken to convert the 
vision into a reality. 

Meanwhile Scott went forward with the preparation 
of the first work which was to make his name known on 
both sides of the Tweed. Wherever he heard of a bal- 
lad he hunted it up, either in person or through the 
instrumentality of assistants, almost all of whom were 
destined themselves to acquire in aiter years more or 
less of distinction in the world. Leyden was one of 
these, a man born in a shepherd's bothy, who, when the 
Edinburgh philosophers found him out, astonished them 
all by the extent and variety of his knowledge. He was 
a frequenter of an obscure book shop in the old town 
kept by an obscure bookseller, by name Constable, who 
very good-naturedly allowed the raw poor youth of 
nineteen to come and read whatever his shelves con- 
tained, and they contained many treasures. Leyden 
was introduced to Scott by Eichard Heber, an accidental 
visitor to Edinburgh, but already one of Scott's corre- 
spondents, and a collector wherever he went of literary 
curiosities. Him Scott found to be of the greatest pos- 
sible use, and he was happy in being able to pay back the 
obligation, while at the same time he benefited society 
by contributing, not long afterwards, to the start of so 
remarkable a man. Leyden, we need scarcely add, died 
too soon in India, just as he had established a reputation 
there second only to that of Sir William Jones, and was 
on the fair road to amass a fortune. 






SIR WALTER SCOTT. 55 

Another of Scott's assistants was James Hogg, the 
Ettrick Shepherd, a genius without conduct, whom 
everybody admired in his writings, but whom nobody 
could serve. Hogg knew or affected to know every bal- 
lad that was ever sung, and every story that was ever 
told on the Scottish border. He was exceedingly adroit 
likewise in filling up blanks and supplying sometimes a 
head and sometimes a tail-piece, just as it was wanted. 
Scott did his best to serve him also, but failed. Hogg 
could not manage his own affairs, yet was for ever urgent 
to be allowed to manage the affairs of others. He was 
to his employer — if we may so speak of Scott — alter- 
nately obsequious, ridiculous, and insolent. The Shep- 
herd's first dinner in Castle Street is thus comically 
described by Scott's biographer : — 

" When Hogg entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Scott, 
being at the time in a delicate state of health, was 
reclining on a sofa. The Shepherd, after being pre- 
sented and making his best bow, forthwith took pos- 
session of another sofa placed opposite to hers, and 
stretched himself thereupon at his full length ; for, as 
he said afterwards, I thought I could never do wrong to 
copy the lady of the house. As his dress at that period 
was precisely that in which any ordinary herdsman 
attends cattle to the market, and as his hands, more- 
over, bore most legible marks of a recent sheep-smear- 
ing, the lady of the house did not observe with perfect 
equanimity the novel usage to which her chintz was 
exposed. The Shepherd, however, remarked nothing of 



56 THE LIFE OF 

all this — dined heartily and drank freely — and by jest, 
anecdote, and song, afforded plentiful merriment to the 
more civilised part of the company. As the liquor 
operated, his familiarity increased and strengthened : 
from ' Mr. Scott' he advanced to ' Shirra,' and thence to 
' Scott,' ' Walter,' and * Watty,' until at supper he fairly 
convulsed the whole company by addressing Mrs. Scott 
as ' Charlotte.' " 

Poor Hogg had all the elements of a poet about him, 
and his " Kilmeny" may compare with any story of the 
kind in the language. But how was it possible essenti- 
ally to serve a man who was always asking, always 
mis-spending what he got, and withal so touchy as 
to address to his benefactor, who had somehow offended 
him, a letter which began " D — d sir," and ended 
" Yours with disgust." 

A third of these assistants cannot be passed without 
special notice, for he grew, as he deserved to grow, into 
the condition of one of Scott's dearest friends. William 
Laidlaw, the son of a tenant-farmer on the Yarrow, was 
gifted, like all the other members of his family, with an 
amiable disposition, a clear understanding, an excellent 
memory, and the purest tastes. He had in his boyhood 
gathered up a store of old songs and tales, all of which 
he gave to Scott ; and if a blank appeared in any which 
Scott received from other quarters, he was generally able 
to fill it up, either from his own recollections, or from 
knowing the place and the people among whom it had 
its origin. William Laidlaw never ceased to enjoy a 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 57 

large share of Scott's friendship. He refused, as his 
father had done before him, to be removed out of the 
state in social life in which Providence had placed him. 
But he became a frequent and honoured guest at Scott's 
and other tables on Tweedside ; and was, as we shall 
see by and by, among the few who were present and 
contributed to Scott's ease at his death. 

At last, in 1802, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 
made its appearance. It was printed at the press of 
James Ballantjme, still a denizen of Kelso, and carried, 
so to speak, public favour by storm. Congratulations 
poured in upon the compiler from all quarters. George 
Ellis, George Canning, Bishop Percy — even cantanker- 
ous Joseph Eitson himself — all wrote to express their 
strong admiration of the performance ; and Lewis, not- 
withstanding the eclipse which it shed upon his Tales of 
Wonder, joined in the chorus of applause. All this 
occurred while' as yet only the two first volumes were in 
the hands of the public. When the third appeared, in- 
cluding the ballad of " Sir Tristrem," the success of the 
undertaking became complete. Scott took at once his 
place in the front rank of literature. He could command 
his own price for the copyright of a separate work, and 
free access to the most remunerative of existing periodi- 
cals. The copyright of the Minstrelsy brought him 
£578. The Edinburgh Review, just started under the 
guidance of Mr. Jeffrey, and published by Mr. Constable, 
wooed him as a contributor. It was conducted then, as 
it is conducted now, on principles of moderation in 



58 THE LIFE OF 

politics, and Scott readily supplied the pages of some of 
its earlier numbers with valuable articles. About the 
same time he paid his first visit to London, Mrs. Scott 
bearing him company. Heber and Mackintosh, then 
sought for at every dinner-table, met him with open 
arms. So did William Stewart Eose, Eogers, and others 
whom we need not stop to particularise. He was the 
guest of his friend George Ellis for some days at Sunning- 
hill, and, returning home by Oxford, was guided over 
that city of palaces by Eeginald Heber, then a newly- 
made bachelor, and the happy winner of the Newdegate 
prize. All this charmed Scott, and he made himself 
charming to everybody. Yet he kept his eye, through 
the blaze of the present, on what might be brought to 
pass in the future. Before the third volume of The 
Scottish Minstrelsy came out, James Ballantyne had trans- 
ferred himself and his types to Edinburgh, and, within 
three years from the date of that occurrence, he and 
Scott were irrevocably bound up in a partnership of 
which the issue was ruin. 

The years 1802-3-4, were seasons of grave alarm 
both in England and Scotland. The people of Scot- 
land expected to be invaded from Flushing or one 
of the northern ports of the Continent, and over 
and over again the volunteers were called out to 
meet the coming danger. Not once, when the bugle 
sounded, was Scott absent from the roll-call. Indeed 
he rode, on one occasion, a hundred miles in four and 
twenty hours, to overtake his regiment, his gallant 



SIK WALTER SCOTT. 59 

black charger carrying him all the way. But Scott's 
zeal as a soldier interfered, or was supposed by the 
Lord Lieutenant of Eoxburghshire to interfere, with 
his duties as Sheriff ; more especially as the cottage at 
Lass wade stood outside his proper jurisdiction. Scott 
positively refused to sheath "the voluntary blade ;" but 
he compromised the difference with his chief by re- 
moving himself and his belongings, in 1804, from the 
banks of the Esk to the banks of the Tweed. The house 
of Ashestiel, situated on the southern bank of the latter 
stream, a few miles from Selkirk, became vacant by the 
death of its proprietor, — who had married a sister of 
Scott's mother, — and the consequent dispersion of the 
family. The young laird, his cousin, was then in India, 
and the Sheriff took a lease of the house and grounds, 
with a small farm adjoining. In every point of view 
the change of residence proved advantageous to him. 
It brought him into a country endeared to his earliest 
recollections, and pregnant for him with home associa- 
tions. It gave him, indeed, a scant neighbourhood, 
more scant than is to be found there now. But the few 
families within reach included, among others, the 
Pringles of Yair, and the Earl of Dalkeith, as often 
as for business or pleasure he might find it convenient 
to set up his staff for a while at Bowhill. On the 
whole, therefore, as soon as the d4sagr4ments of change 
were surmounted, Scott was well pleased with the step 
which he had taken, as indeed he had every reason 
to be. 



60 



THE LIFE OF 



Scott's preparations for removing to Ashestiel were 
all complete when his uncle Eobert died, bequeathing 
to him the villa of Bosebank, where in youth so many 
happy days had been spent. He was not tempted by 
that incident to forego his own plans, but sold the place 




ASHESTIEL. 



for £5000, and looked about for land in which to invest 
the money. For his great ambition was to become an 
owner of the soil, not because of the rental which might 
thence accrue, nor yet because land, if not the most 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 61 

remunerative, is the safest of all securities ; but because 
visions of feudal state, as connected with the ownership 
of land, were constantly before his eyes, and he yearned 
to realise them. Meanwhile, however, he was hard at 
work upon the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which grew out 
of a ballad begun some years previously, in order to 
gratify the amiable Countess of Dalkeith. In the 
autumn of this year he completed it, Messrs. Longman 
being the publishers, and Ballantyne the printer. The 
immediate gain to him in money was only £169 : 5s. 
This was the result of what is called a " division of 
profits," an arrangement which, in most cases, adds won- 
derfully to the costs of publication, and proportionately 
curtails the amount to be divided. But the sale rose 
to such an extent, and the profits to the publishers 
proved so large, that they gratuitously and handsomely 
presented him with an additional £500. Had he added 
that sum to his uncle's legacy, as well as an additional 
£100 with which the successful publishers subse- 
quently presented him, and purchased with the whole 
the small estate of Broadmeadows, how different the 
whole course of his existence might have been! The 
lands lay over against the ruins of Newark, on the north 
bank of the Yarrow ; and often, while the Lay was yet 
in manuscript, he rode round and surveyed them with 
a longing eye. But soon after the publication of the 
poem, Ballantyne wrote to say that, unless additional 
funds were procured, his venture must fail ; and Scott, 
who had already pledged his credit to obtain loans for 



62 THE LIFE OF 

the house, consented to become a partner in the concern, 
and to pay down £5000 as the price of one-third of the 
property. So went from him the nest-egg which he had 
proposed to hide safely in the lands of Broadmeadows ; 
and so was taken the first step in a course destined to 
terminate as we shall see by and by. 

The act, which in its results operated so fatally upon 
his fortunes, was not forced on by that ignorance of 
affairs, or indifference to them, which is assumed to be 
the characteristic of the poetic temperament. In his own 
way — a most mistaken way as the event proved in many 
respects — Scott was as shrewd a man of business as 
ever lived. He believed that the printing concern 
might be made enormously lucrative, and he embarked 
in it, having laid his plans for realising this belief. But 
he did more. Before he would entirely withdraw from 
the practice of the law, he looked round for some berth 
which more effectually than the Sheriffship might secure 
him against the risk of absolute poverty, or even of a 
compulsory economy, in the event of his speculations 
failing. The Scotch Bar still retains some prizes of this 
sort, though they are less numerous than they once 
were. Such are the clerkships of the Supreme Court at 
Edinburgh, of which three out of five still exist, and of 
which the salary, now fixed, though formerly paid in 
fees, amounts to £1300 a year. For the reversion of 
one of these, which was expected soon to fall vacant, 
Scott applied, and, after a delay as brief as circumstances 
would allow, the place w T as secured to him. To the 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 63 

emoluments of the office he did not immediately succeed. 
The aged occupant held on longer than was expected ; 
and Scott had for some years all the trouble without the 
pay. But the certainty that sooner or later he should 
succeed to a good and fixed income, made his mind 
easy. He closed his fee-book, never to open it again, 
and, with all the energy which belonged to his energetic 
nature, bent himself to keep the printing presses busy, 
and to realise out of them a fortune. Still affecting to 
treat literature rather as an amusement than as a pro- 
fession, to make it his staff, as he himself said, and not 
his crutch, he projected and set on foot such an amount 
of literary labour as had never before been thought of, 
much less undertaken, by any one man. His influence, 
be it remembered, in all branches of the publishing trade 
was immense. Publishers and authors alike seemed ready 
to act on his suggestions. Any project recommended by 
him was sure to be favourably regarded, especially if 
hopes were held out of his taking personal interest in 
promoting it ; and his judgment in regard to what would 
suit the public taste was generally sound. His first 
scheme was the production of a complete set of British 
Poets, edited by himself. Constable, now beginning to 
rise in the world, was to be the publisher ; Ballantyne 
and Co. of course the printers of the work. Ellis sug- 
gested a similar proceeding with the Chroniclers, and 
Scott agreed. His friend, Mr. Thomas Thomson, talked 
of bringing out a new edition of Clarendon, and the 
printing of that was likewise promised to the Bal- 



64 



THE LIFE OF 



lantynes. Though none of these undertakings ever 
came to completion, enough was done with each of them 
to keep the types busy, and to necessitate the raising of 
a fresh loan, Scott himself becoming security. Yet all 
was done under a cloud. Scott never appeared to the 
outer world to have any pecuniary motives for bestirring 
himself as he did to keep the press going. He gave out, 
freely enough, that he would have nothing to say to any 
work unless Ballantyne were commissioned to print it, 
but the sole reason ever assigned was that he preferred 
his friend's typography to that of all the trade besides. 
We quite agree with Mr. Lockhart in the judgment 
which he passes on these transactions. 

" It is an old saying, that wherever there is a secret 
there must be something wrong, and dearly did he pay 
the penalty for the mystery in which he had chosen to 
involve the transaction. It was his rule, from the be- 
ginning, that whatever he wrote or edited must be 
printed at that press ; and had he catered for it only as 
author and editor, all would have been well ; but had 
the booksellers known his direct pecuniary interest in 
keeping up and extending the occupation of those types, 
they would have taken into account his lively imagina- 
tion and sanguine temperament, as well as his taste and 
judgment, and considered far more deliberately than 
they too often did, his multifarious recommendations of 
new literary schemes, coupled though these were with 
some dim understanding that, if the Ballantyne press 
were employed, his own literary skill would be at his 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 65 

friend's disposal for the general superintendence of the 
undertaking." 

With all this we cordially agree ; yet let it not be 
forgotten, in extenuation of the fault, that at the period 
when Scott connected himself with the printing-office of 
the Ballantynes, public opinion in the profession was 
utterly opposed to the mixing up of the status of an 
advocate with trade in any shape whatever. He could 
not, therefore, avow the partnership without losiDg caste. 
But why do that which could not be avowed, and why 
go farther in the same direction, as we shall find by and 
by that he imprudently did ? 

In the year 1805, when the Lay had fairly 
established itself in popular favour, Scott's life as a 
barrister may be said to have merged in that of an 
author. Ashestiel became, more than the cottage at 
Lasswade had ever been, the home of a busy literary 
man, and the resort of literary strangers. The duties of 
a sheriff in Scotland, though important, are not usually 
severe, and these he discharged faithfully ; making him- 
self as much beloved among those to whom he admi- 
nistered the law, as among his own associates. But 
letters filled without engrossing his mind ; and in order 
that he might give to them the increased attention that 
was necessary, without taking a less prominent part in 
society than he used to do, he changed his habits, and 
instead of sitting up far into the night, rose early in the 
morning. 

" He rose," says his friend Mr. Skene, in a letter to 

F 



66 



THE LIFE OF 



Mr. Lockhart, "at five o'clock; lit his own fire, and 
shaved and dressed with great deliberation ; for he was 
a very martinet in all but the mere coxcombries of the 
toilet ; not abhorring effeminate dandyism itself as much 
as the slightest approach to personal slovenliness, or even 
those bed-gown and slipper tricks, as he called them, in 
which literary men are so apt to indulge. Arrayed in 
his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to wear 
till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, 
all his papers ranged before him in the most accurate 
order, and his books of reference marshalled around him 
on the floor, while at least one favoured dog lay watch- 
ing his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation. By 
the time the family assembled for breakfast, between 
nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) 
to break the neck of the day's work. After breakfast a 
couple of hours more were given to his solitary work ; 
and by noon he was, as he used to say, his own man. 
When the weather was bad he would labour incessantly 
all the morning ; but the general rule was to be out and 
on horseback by one o'clock at the latest ; while if any 
more distant excursion had been proposed over night, he 
was ready to set out on it by ten ; his occasional rainy 
days of unremitting study, forming, as he said, a fund in 
his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for 
accommodation, whenever the sun shone with peculiar 
brightness." 

Mr. Skene describes Scott as he lived at Ashestiel. 
The description applies with equal accuracy to his 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



67 



manner of life at Abbotsford. There, indeed, when not 
constrained by politeness or inclination to be the guide 
of his guests to points of interest in the neighbourhood, 
he found his own amusement chiefly in superintending 
the laying out of his grounds, thinning the woods, 
marking the limits 
of the plantations, 
or watching, or 
himself it might be 
taking part in, the 
work of planting and 
measuring. In all 
this his constant com- 
panion and assistant 
was Tom Purdie, a re- 
markable man, whom 
he found a poacher, 
and reclaimed to be- 
come the most faith- 
ful of bailiffs. 

Another rule Scott laid down for himself from which 
he never deviated. Every letter which he received was 
answered the same day ; indeed nothing short of this 
could have enabled him to keep abreast of his corre- 
spondence, which was always very large, and became 
latterly quite oppressive. Nor in noticing his peculi- 
arities must we forget his exceeding love both of horses 
and dogs. So long as he served in the yeomanry, he 
never let a morning pass without visiting his charger, 




SCOTT AND PURDIE. 



68 



THE LIFE OF 



and feeding him with, his own hand, and this before the 
work of the day began. As to the dogs — whether it 
were Camp a bull-terrier, and long a special favourite, 
or Douglas and Percy his greyhounds, or noble Maida 
his stag-hound, whose monument still attracts the notice 
of the visitor as he enters the hall at Abbotsford — for all 
these in succession, and the countless terriers their con- 
temporaries, a window of his study always stood open, 
by which they might pass to and fro as the humour 
took them. In winter they made their fancies known in 
the usual way, except Maida, whose knock at the door 
could not be mistaken. 










Of all field sports Scott was fond ; but his favourite 
was latterly coursing. An otter hunt also, when it came 
in his way, had special charms for him, as his description 
of one in Guy Mannering shows. Nor did it fail to 
increase his enjoyment if, in following the hounds, he 
found himself called upon to dash over difficult fords, 
and prick through morasses. These tastes and capa- 
bilities had their root in that habit of idealising which 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



69 




70 THE LIFE OF 

made him alternately the border chieftain, and the man 
of the nineteenth century. At Ashestiel, and still more 
after he became Lord of Abbotsford, whether within 
doors or without, he lived in imagination the life of a 
feudal baron ; carousing, chatting, hunting freely with 
his retainers ; and not only ready, but eager, to lead 
them to battle. It was only when in Edinburgh, or com- 
pelled to give his attention to accounts which seldom 
came straight, and bills that must be taken up, that he 
fell back into the condition of an ordinary mortal ; and 
it is not going too far to say that, as he never submitted 
to this humiliation except with impatience and disgust, 
so he escaped from it, be the circumstances what they 
might, with the utmost despatch possible. 

As we are on the subject of Scott's personal habits, 
it may be as well to state here how he habitually bore 
himself in the domestic circle, strictly so-called. His 
wife, with many agreeable and amiable qualities, never 
was to him, nor could she be, a companion. She was 
proud of his genius, and jealous of any attacks that 
might be made upon his renown. Indeed she never 
forgave Jeffrey his article on Marmion in the Edinburgh 
Review ; and could not help showing what she felt, when, 
immediately after the appearance of the critique, the 
author of it dined at Scott's table. Still, Scott was 
sincerely attached to her, and his diary shows that her 
death, though long expected, affected him, when it came, 
very deeply. His children, on the other hand — and he 
had four, two sons and two daughters — twined them- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7l 

selves round the core of his heart. In their infancy he 
seems to have taken little comparative notice of them ; 
but, as soon as they were old enough to understand what 
he said, he delighted in having them with him, and de- 
voted to them much time and tender care. Like their 
mute companions, the dogs, they had free admission to 
his study at all hours, when he would lay down his pen, 
take them on his knee, repeat to them a ballad or tell a 
story, kiss them, and send them away again. From a 
very early age they were accustomed to dine with their 
father and mother ; and when very good were rewarded 
by being allowed to sit up to supper. Their education 
he conducted in a somewhat desultory manner. The 
girls, when old enough, were placed under a governess, 
selected far more because of good sense and moral worth, 
than on account of showy accomplishments ; and the 
boys went to school, as he had himself done — the eldest 
passing thence into a cavalry regiment, the youngest 
entering Oxford and taking a degree, preparatory to his 
admission into the Foreign Office. But till they were 
ripe for systematic teaching he was himself their in- 
structor ; the instruction being communicated much 
more frequently by oral tradition than through books. 
His tales, on what are called week days, were taken from 
the annals of their own and other countries ; on Sunday, 
they listened in like manner to stories, but they were 
stories taken from sacred history ; and here, by the 
way, we may observe that with Scott, whether at 
Abbotsford or in Edinburgh, Sunday was always a day 



72 THE LIFE OF 

of rest and recreation. In the country, however full of 
company the house might be, he invariably announced 
his intention, at breakfast, of reading prayers at eleven 
o'clock ; and he added, frankly and without affectation 
of shyness, " and I expect every lady and gentleman to 
be present." There usually followed the reading of the 
liturgy a sermon by some great divine — not unfrequently 
Jeremy Taylor — after which guests and members of the 
household were alike free to stroll wherever fancy led 
them. He himself, usually attended by a select few, 
wandered amid his woods, and poured out to a delighted 
audience endless tales and legends connected with the 
locality. When in Edinburgh one or two old friends 
invariably dined with him — a custom which he regarded 
as becoming both the men and the day. He called 
these his " dinners without the silver dishes," and 
the evenings were usually lightened by reading aloud 
a play from Shakspeare, or a new poem by one of 
the favourite poets of the day. Only the oldest and 
most familiar of his friends were admitted to these 
symposia, which, having been ushered in by attendance 
on public worship at St. John's Episcopal Church, were 
by them regarded as the reverse of inappropriate to a 
Christian festival. 

Scott's generosity to his less fortunate brother authors 
was extreme ; indeed it often degenerated into weakness. 
Not content with giving them money, he would tax his 
judgment to discover something meritorious in every 
manuscript which they submitted to him, and afterwards, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 73 

it might be, promote a publication which did material 
good to no one. Other methods also, characteristic of 
himself, he took of serving them. For example, having 
been invited, during one of his earlier visits to London, 
to dine with Caroline, Princess of Wales, at Montague 
House, and requested to repeat some of his own unpub- 
lished verses, he replied that he really could not recollect 
any which would be worthy of Her Eoyal Highness's 
notice ; but that, if allowed, he would repeat a ballad by 
an obscure author of whose talents he entertained the 
highest admiration. The desired consent being given, 
he spouted some "beautiful verses from a collection of 
poems by Hogg ; and accomplished his purpose by 
getting the Princess to become a subscriber to the 
volume, which was soon afterwards published. 

Thus far we have followed Sir Walter Scott's fortunes 
closely, and as it were chronologically, while he fought 
his way to fame. What we have to say of him after he 
attained the proudest position which literature has ever 
won for its votary in his own lifetime, must necessarily 
be more brief. The three years and a half between the 
autumn of 1804 and the spring of 1808 he spent partly at 
Ashestiel, partly in Edinburgh. It was a season at once 
of great enjoyment and unceasing labour. Already his 
acquaintance was sought, not only by his neighbours of 
every degree, but by almost every man or woman distin- 
guished in literature and art throughout the United 
Kingdom. In 1808 Marmion made its appearance, bring- 
ing with it an immense accession of renown to the author. 



74 THE LIFE OF 

In spite of a somewhat ungenerous critique in the Edin- 
burgh Review (which had by this time become a strong 
party publication, in fierce hostility to the government 
and its foreign as well as domestic policy) that noble poem 
achieved at once boundless popularity, and placed Scott 
at the head of the living literature of England, and we 
may safely add of Europe. He was not rendered giddy 
by the position ; far less induced to relax in his exer- 
tions. Its effect was the very opposite ; though, in 
some respects, his literary zeal took a new direction. 
Eor example, guided mainly, no doubt, by the honest 
desire to counteract what he regarded as a pernicious 
influence, though in part, perhaps, by indignation at the 
personal treatment which he had received in its pages, 
he lent himself willingly to a proposal which was made 
in 1808, of getting up a Quarterly Journal in opposition 
to the Edinburgh Review. The Quarterly Journal which 
he assisted in setting afloat, was, as we need scarcely 
observe, the same in which these sentences originally 
appeared. But its origin was entirely due to the energy 
and sagacity of the late Mr. Murray, who had already 
written to Mr. Canning on the subject, and then pro- 
ceeded in person to solicit the co-operation of Scott. 
Mr. Murray's proposal was heartily received by Scott, 
who promised his own assistance and that of his friends. 
Scott wrote three articles for the first number, which 
appeared in the beginning of 1809, and contributed from 
time to time many other papers, which were subsequently 
included in his prose works. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 75 

At this time, also, a new project entered into his 
head, and, unfortunately for himself and all concerned, 
he made preparations to realise it. Mr. Constable, the 
publisher of the Edinburgh Review, had fallen out with 
the Ballantynes. He was, moreover, an abettor of the 
principles of his own journal, if not formally professing 
them ; and these two things constituted, in Scott's eyes, 
a grave offence against morals. He determined to make 
war upon the Whig bookseller by setting up a publishing 
house, in opposition to him, at his own door. Yet at the 
moment when this scheme took possession of him he was 
under engagements to different publishing houses, the 
bare enumeration of which might well astound the most 
industrious of authors. Tor one he had undertaken to 
bring out a complete edition of British novelists ; 
another made arrangements with him to collect the 
works, and write a life of Dry den ; a third had engaged 
him to prepare a new edition of Kalph Sadler's State 
Papers, and of the earlier volumes of Somers's Travels ; 
while to Constable himself he was pledged for a bio- 
graphy of Swift, and a republication of his writings. 
Referring to these transactions, Lockhart says — 

" Conversing with Scott many years afterwards about 
the tumult of engagements in which he was then in- 
volved, he said : — ' Aye, it was enough to tear me to 
pieces ; but there was a wonderful exhilaration about it 
all. My blood was kept at fever pitch ; I felt as if I 
could have grappled with anything and everything. 
Then there was hardly one of all my schemes that did 



76 THE LIFE OF 

not afford me the means of serving some poor devil of 
a brother author. There were always huge piles of 
materials to be arranged, sifted, and indexed ; volumes 
of extracts to be transcribed ; journeys to be made 
hither and thither for ascertaining little facts and dates ; 
in short, I could commonly keep half-a-dozen of the 
ragged regiment of the Parnassus in tolerable ease/ I 
said he must have felt something like what a locomotive 
engine on a railway might be supposed to do when a 
score of coal-waggons are seen linking themselves to it 
the moment it gets the steam up, and it pushes on its 
course, regardless of the burthen. ' Yes/ he said, laugh- 
ing, and making a crashing cut with his axe (for we 
were felling larch trees), ' but there was a cursed lot of 
dung-carts, too/ " 

It was amid the busy throng of all this occupation 
that his rupture with Constable took place, creating the 
desire to which we have just alluded, of fighting the 
Bibliopole with his own weapons. Other reasons, we 
suspect, operated with him besides honest indignation ; 
but of these by and by. Meanwhile our readers will 
judge for themselves of the spirit in which Scott ad- 
dressed himself to this new enterprise when they have 
read a letter to Mr. Morritt of Eokeby Park, which we 
subjoin : — 

"Edinburgh, IMh Jan. 1809. 
"My dear Sir — For a long while I thought my 
summons to London would have been immediate, so 
that I should have had the pleasure to wait upon you at 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 77 

Eokeby Park on my way to town Meanwhile, 

I have been concocting, at the instigation of various 
loyal and well-disposed persons, a grand scheme of op- 
position to the proud critics of Edinburgh. It is now 
matured in all its branches, and consists of the follow- 
ing : a new Eeview in London, to be called the Quarterly, 
William Gifford to be the editor ; George Ellis, Eose, 
Mr. Canning if possible, Erere, and all the ancient 
anti-Jacobins, to be concerned. The first number is now 
in hand, and the allies, I hope and trust, securely united 
to each other. I have promised to get them such as- 
sistance as I can, and most happy should I be to prevail 
upon you to put your hand to the ark. You can so 
easily run off an article, either of learning or of fun, 
that it would be inexcusable not to afford us your as- 
sistance. 

" Then, to turn the flank of Messrs. Constable and 
Co., and to avenge myself of certain impertinences which 
in the bitterness of their Whiggery they have dared to 
indulge in towards me, I have proposed to start against 
them, on Whitsunday first, the celebrated printer Bal- 
lantyne (who had the honour of meeting you at Ashe- 
stiel), in the shape of an Edinburgh publisher, with a 
long purse and a sound political creed, not to mention 
an alliance offensive and defensive with young John 
Murray of Fleet Street, the most enlightened and active 
of the London trade. By this means I hope to counter- 
balance the predominating influence of Constable and 
Co., who at present have it in their power and inclina- 



78 THE LIFE OF 

tion to forward or suppress any book, as they approve or 
dislike its political tendency. Lastly, I have caused the 
said Ballantyne to venture upon an Edinburgh Annual 
Eegister, of which I send you a prospectus. I intend 
to help him myself as far as time will admit, and hope 
to procure him many respectable coadjutors." 

We know not in what terms to speak of this trans- 
action. It would have been unwise, had it been exactly 
as Scott describes it. It was foolish, and not altogether 
morally defensible, looking at it as the facts of the case 
subsequently came to light. Scott was himself a partner 
in the publishing, as he had previously been in the print- 
ing business, and the only purse on which both depended 
for existence was his own. It never throve. Year 
after year the necessity of accommodation-bills became 
more urgent, and Scott either did not, or could not, 
understand that such a course as this could end only in 
bankruptcy. 

The year 1818 may be said to have found and left 
Scott at the very height of his prosperity and renown. 
He had realised the day-dream of his boyhood — he was 
become, not a landowner only, but a sort of mediaeval 
chieftain. In 1811 he had purchased a farm, which was 
now grown into a considerable estate. Clarty Hole had 
become Abbotsford ; and, where a modest cottage once 
stood, a stately mansion was rising. Woods, well kept 
and arranged, were beginning to feather the hills, which, 
when they passed into his hands, were bleak and bare ; 
and gardens and terraces, gracefully laid out, looked 



SIE WALTER SCOTT. 79 

down upon the Tweed. There he spent the summer and 
autumn of each year in the enjoyment of everything 
which was calculated to gratify his tastes and exercise 
his benevolence. His poetry, if it had in some degree 
declined in public favour, was still universally read ; 
and his novels — the Waverley Novels as they were called 
— were in everybody's hands. How they began and 
how they forced their way into an amount of popularity, 
quite without precedent, it would be foreign from the 
purpose of this sketch if we paused to give an account. 
We content ourselves, therefore, for the present, with 
stating that his works were the daily food, not only of 
his own countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His 
society was courted by whatever England could show of 
eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, 
strove with each other in every demonstration of respect 
and worship ; and, a few political fanatics and curious 
poetasters excepted, wherever he appeared, in town or 
country, all who had Scotch blood in them, " gentle or 
simple," felt it move more rapidly through their veins 
when they found themselves in Scott's presence. The 
clerkship of Session, of which for five years he had dis- 
charged the duties gratuitously, was now worth £1300 
a-year to him • his Sheriffdom brought in £300 more ; 
and the annual profits of his novels alone had not, for 
some time, been less than £10,000 a-year. In 1815 he 
had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington 
in Paris, after visiting the scene of that great man's 
greatest victory, while as yet the wrecks of war covered 



80 



THE LIFE OF 







SIR WALTER SCOTT. 81 

the field. Nor were external honours wanting. To- 
wards the end of November 1818, it was intimated to 
him that the Chief of the State desired to confer upon 
him the dignity of a Baronet, which purpose was carried 
into effect two years later. No doubt Scott had his trials 
too. All that were in need applied to him for assistance. 
All who fancied that their merits were overlooked called 
on him to find an opening for them ; and one poetess in 
particular, Miss Seward, made him the guardian of her 
posthumous fame — a task which, had it been possible, 
he would have gladly evaded. But such troubles hardly 
broke the apparent quiet of his existence. To the outer 
world that seemed to be, and to a great extent it was, a 
singularly joyous one. 

We quoted, not long ago, from a letter of Mr. Skene, 
the description of one of Scott's days at Ashestiel. The 
following life-like sketch, which we extract from Mr. 
Lockhart's work, shows us in his holiday-garb the Lord of 
Abbotsford, at the period of which we are now speaking. 

After telling how Abbotsford was thronged with 
visitors from all lands — some arriving by invitation, 
others coming, like pilgrims, uninvited, yet never re- 
pelled — to worship at the shrine of genius, Lockhart 
goes on to say : — " It is needless to add that Sir Walter 
was familiarly known, long before the days I am speak- 
ing of, to almost all the nobility and higher gentry of 
Scotland, and consequently that there seldom wanted a 
fair proportion of them to assist him in doing the honours 
of his country. It is still more superfluous to say so, 

G 



82 THE LIFE OF 

respecting the heads of his own profession in Edinburgh. 
Sibi et amicis, — Abbotsford was their villa whenever they 
pleased to resort to it ; and few of them were ever 
absent from it long. He lived, meanwhile, in a constant 
interchange of easy visits with the gentlemens' families 
of Teviotdale and the forest, so that mixed up with his 
superfine admirers of the Mayfair breed, his staring 
worshippers from foreign parts, and his quick-witted 
coevals of the Parliament House — there was found 
generally some hearty home-spun laird, with his dame 
and the young laird' — a bashful bumpkin, perhaps, whose 
ideas did not soar beyond his gun and pointer ; or per- 
haps a little pseudo dandy, for whom the Kelso race- 
course and the Jedburgh ball were life and the world. 
To complete the olla podrida we must remember that no 
old acquaintance or family connections, however remote 
their actual station or style of manners from his own, 
were forgotten or lost sight of. He had, moreover, near 
relations who, except when they visited him, rarely if 
ever found admittance to what the haughty dialect of the 
upper world is pleased to designate exclusively as society. 
These were welcome guests whoever might be under that 
roof ; and it was the same with many a worthy citizen 
of Edinburgh, habitually moving in an obscure circle, 
who had been in the same class with Scott at the High 
School, or his fellow-apprentice, when he was proud of 
earning threepence a page by the use of his pen. To 
dwell on nothing else, it was surely a beautiful perfec- 
tion of real universal humanity and politeness that could 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 83 

enable this great and good man to blend guests so mul- 
tifarious in one group, and contrive to make them all 
equally happy with him and themselves, and with each 
other. 

The humblest person who stayed merely for a short 
visit, must have departed with the impression that 
what he witnessed was an occasional novelty ; that 
Scott's courtesy prompted him to break in upon his 
habits when he had a stranger to amuse, but that it was 
physically impossible that the man who was writing 
the Waverley romances at the rate of nearly twelve 
volumes in the year could continue, week after week, 
and month after month, to devote all but a hardly per- 
ceptible fraction of his mornings to out-of-door occupa- 
tions, and the whole of his evenings to the entertainment 
of a constantly varying circle of guests. The hospitalities 
of his afternoons must alone have been enough to ex- 
haust the energies of almost any man ; for his visitors 
did not mean, like those of country houses in general, 
to enjoy the landlord's good cheer and amuse each other, 
but the far greater proportion arrived from a distance 
for the sole sake of the poet and novelist himself, whose 
person they had never before seen, and whose voice 
they might never again have an opportunity of hearing. 
No other villa in Europe was ever resorted to from the 
same motives, and to anything like the same extent, 
except Fernay ; and Voltaire never dreamt of being 
visible to his hunters, except for a brief space of the day ; 
few of them ever dined with him, and none of them 



84 



THE LIFE OF 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 85 

seem to have slept under his roof. Scott's establishment 
in the country resembled in every particular that of the 
affluent idler, who, because he has inherited and would 
fain transmit political influence in some province keeps 
open house, receives as many as he has room for, and 
sees their apartments occupied as soon as they vacate 
them, by another troop of the same description. Even 
on gentlemen guiltless of inkshed, the exercise of hos- 
pitality on this sort of scale is found to impose a heavy 
tax ; few of them now-a-days think of maintaining it 
for any large portion of the year; very few indeed 
below the rank of the highest class of nobility — in whose 
case there is usually a staff of led-captains, led-chaplains, 
servile dandies, and some professional talkers and jokers 
from London, to take the chief part of the bustling. ISTow 
Scott had often in his mouth the pithy verses : — 

Conversation is but carving, 
Give no more to every guest 
Than he's able to digest ; 
Give him always of the prime, 
And but little at a time ; 
Carve to all, but just enough, 
Let them neither starve nor stuff; 
And that you may have your due, 
Let your neighbours carve for you. 

And he in his own familiar circle always, and in other 
circles where it was possible, furnished a happy exem- 
plification of these rules and regulations of the Dean of 
St. Patrick's. But the same sense and benevolence 



86 THE LIFE OF 

which dictated adherence to them among his old friends 
and acquaintances, rendered it necessary to break them 
when he was receiving strangers of the class I have 
described above into Abbotsford. He felt that their 
coming was the best homage they could pay to his 
celebrity, and that it would have been as uncourteous 
in him not to give them their fill of his talk, as it 
would be in your every-day lord of manors to make 
his casual guests welcome, indeed, to his venison, but 
to keep his grouse-shooting for his immediate allies and 
dependants." 

What an insight these reunions give into the manner 
in which he bore himself, while blending in the country, 
the twofold character of a great Border chief and a hard- 
working author. The picture would, however, be in- 
complete, if we failed to throw some light upon his 
manner of life in Edinburgh. 

" Breakfast was his chief meal. Before that came he 
had gone through the severest part of his day's work, 
and he then set to work with the zeal of Crabbe's Squire 
Tovell— 

' And laid at once a pound upon his plate.' 

No foxhunter ever prepared himself for the field by more 
substantial appliances. His table was always provided, 
in addition to the usually plentiful delicacies of a Scotch 
breakfast, with some article on which he did most 
hearty execution — a round of beef, a pasty such as made 
Gil Bias's eyes water, or, most welcome of all, a cold 
sheep's head, the charms of which primitive dainty he 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 87 

has so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers 
of Dr. Johnson and his bear-leader. A huge brown loaf 
flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden 
trencher, that he might cut and come again with the better 
knife. Often did the clerk's coach, commonly called among 
themselves The Lively, which trundled round every morn- 
ing to pick up the brotherhood, and then deposit them, at 
the proper moment, in the Parliament Close — often did 
this lumbering hackney arrive at his door before he had 
fully appeased what Homer calls 'the sacred rage of 
hunger ;' and vociferous was the merriment of the learned 
Uncles when the surprised poet swung forth to join them, 
with an extemporised sandwich, that looked like a 
ploughman's luncheon, in his hand. He never tasted 
anything more before dinner, and at dinner he ate as 
sparingly as Squire Tovell's niece from the boarding- 
school, 

* Who cut the sanguine flesh in frnstriuns fine, 
And wondered much to see the creatures dine.' 

The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old- 
fashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the 
days of Saunders Freshford, and which really are excel- 
lent dishes — such, in truth, as Scotland borrowed from 
France before Catherine de Medicis brought in her 
Italian virtuosi to revolutionise the kitchen like the 
court. Of most of these he has, I believe, in the course 
of his novels found some opportunity to record his 
esteem. But above all, who can forget that his King 
Jamie, amidst the splendours of Whitehall, thinks him- 



88 THE LIFE OF 

self an ill-used monarch unless his first course includes 
cockie-leeMe" 

Scott had two circles with which he dined while in 
Edinburgh: one which, comprising the elite of the 
aristocracy of rank and letters, may be called his re- 
fined circle ; the other, in which Constable and the 
Ballantynes play the part of amphitryons, may be 
spoken of as his jovial circle. The limits at our dis- 
posal will not sanction a detailed account of each, 
though a description, if fairly given, would more than 
repay the labour of perusal. So, likewise, to our regret, 
we feel ourselves obliged to deal with the Abbotsford 
hunt with the symposium which followed, — and still 
more attractive because appealing with greater force to our 
convictions and sympathies, with the happy intercourse 
which was kept up among the households of Abbotsford, 
Chiefswood, Huntly Burn, Gala, and Morton. But the 
following is really too good not to be extracted at 
length : — 

" Before breakfast was over (Lockhart is describing a 
day in October 1818) the post-bag arrived, and its con- 
tents were so numerous that Lord Melville asked Scott 
what election was on hand, not doubting but that there 
must be some very particular reason for such a shoal of 
letters. He answered that it was much the same most 
days, and added, * though no one has kinder friends in 
the franking line, and though Freeling and Croker 
especially are always ready to stretch the point of pri- 
vilege in my favour, I am nevertheless a fair contributor 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



89 




90 THE LIFE OF 

to the revenue, for I think my bill for letters seldom 
comes under £150 a-year, and as to coach parcels, they 
are a perfect ruination.' He then told him, 'One 
morning last spring I opened a huge lump of a despatch 
without looking how it was addressed, never doubting 
that it had travelled under some omnipotent frank like 
the First Lord of the Admiralty's, when lo and behold ! 
the contents proved to be a MS. play by a young lady 
of New York, who kindly requested me to read and 
correct it, equip it with prologue and epilogue, procure 
for it a favourable reception from the manager of Drury 
Lane, and make Murray or Constable bleed handsomely 
for the copyright ; and on inspecting the cover, I found 
that I had been charged £5 odd for the postage. This 
was bad enough, but there was no help, so I groaned 
and submitted. A fortnight or so after, another packet, 
of not less formidable bulk, arrived, and I was absent 
enough to break its seal, too, without examination. 
Conceive my horror when out jumped the same iden- 
tical tragedy of the Cherokee Lovers, with a second epistle 
from the authoress, stating that, as the winds had been 
boisterous, she feared the vessel entrusted with her 
former communication might have foundered, and there- 
fore judged it prudent to forward a duplicate.' 

" Scott said he must retire to answer his letters ; but 
that the sociable and the ponies would be at the door 
by one o'clock, when he purposed to show Melrose and 
Dryburgh to Lady Melville and any of the rest of the 
party that chose to accompany them ; adding that his 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 91 

son Walter would lead anybody who preferred a gun to 
the likeliest place for a blackcock, and that Charlie 
Purdie (Tom's brother) would attend upon Mr. Wilson 
and whoever else chose to try a cast of the salmon-rod. 
He withdrew when all this was arranged, and appeared 
at the time appointed, with, perhaps, a dozen letters 
sealed for the post, and a coach-parcel addressed to 
James Ballantyne, which he dropped at the turnpike- 
gate as we drove to Melrose. Seeing it picked up by a 
dirty urchin, and carried into a hedge pot-house, where 
half-a-dozen nondescript wayfarers were smoking and 
tippling, I could not but wonder that it had not been 
the fate of some one of those innumerable packets to fall 
into unscrupulous hands, and betray the grand secret. 
That very morning we had seen two post-chaises drawn 
up at his gate, and the enthusiastic travellers, seemingly 
decent tradesmen, who must have been packed in a 
manner worthy of. Mr. Gilpin, lounging about to catch a 
glimpse of him at his going forth. But it was impossible 
in those days to pass between Melrose and Abbotsford 
without encountering some odd figure, armed with a 
sketch-book, evidently bent on a peep at the Great 
Unknown ; and it must be allowed that some of these 
pedestrians looked as if they might have thought it very 
excusable to make prize, by hook or by crook, of a MS. 
chapter of the Tales of My Landlord." 

When Scott first began to write, he was communica- 
tive almost to a fault. All who lived on terms of inti- 
macy with him were informed of his projects and their 



92 THE LIFE OF 

results. This habit he began to lay aside after the 
Lady of the Lake made its appearance, and by and by he 
went into an opposite extreme. The Vision of Don 
Roderick having partially failed — if we can speak of that 
as a failure which was a success, only not quite so de- 
cided as those which preceded it — and some misgivings 
in regard to Bokeby having risen in his own mind, he 
put forth, almost simultaneously with this latter work, 
the Bridal of Triermain, which he passed upon the 
world as the work of his friend William Erskine. The 
experiment appears to have satisfied himself, and, when 
at length he made up his mind to complete the prose 
tale of Waverley, which had been long begun and laid 
aside for five years, the expediency of acting in the same 
manner with the novels pressed itself upon him. He 
put on a disguise, which was never absolutely laid 
aside till necessity compelled ; yet, which almost from 
the outset, sufficed to mislead only the crowd. Besides 
that the secret was confided originally to ten, and ulti- 
mately to thirty individuals, scarcely a well-instructed 
outsider failed, after a while, to attribute the authorship 
of those matchless stories to the right person ; so that, 
when at last the avowal came, it can hardly be said to 
have surprised even those who listened to it. Alas, 
alas ! the avowal came under circumstances the most 
distressing ; for which already, in spite of the strongest 
possible appearances to the contrary, the preparations 
were in progress. 

As early as 1810, when the Lay had reached its 






SIR WALTER SCOTT. 93 

eleventh, and the Lady of the Lake its fifth edition, the 
affairs of the publishing and printing establishments, 
over which the Ballantynes presided, began to show 
signs of falling into confusion. How Scott, with the 
facts then brought to his notice, could allow himself to 
remain a partner in these firms, and how, so remaining, 
he had the temerity to indulge his appetite for land, 
adding field to field, and farm to farm, must always 
remain a mystery. So keenly was he affected by the 
tidings which his partners conveyed to him, that he en- 
tertained serious thoughts of looking for employment 
abroad. He would have certainly accompanied Mr. 
Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville to India, had that 
statesman gone out, as he was at one moment expected 
to do, as Governor- General. Mr. Dundas did not, how- 
ever, go to India, and Scott, carried away in part by the 
arguments of the Ballantynes, and in part by his own 
sanguine temperament, persuaded himself that the vessel 
would yet stagger through, and assented to an ex- 
tension, continually increasing, of the system of accom- 
modation bills. So things proceeded ; the houses of 
business always reeling, and just able from time to 
time to stand upon their feet, while he laid out enormous 
sums on the expansion and adornment of his estate and 
castle. Other warnings came, one in 1812 so startling, 
that it induced Scott to make up his difference with 
Constable, and to put an end to the publishing busi- 
ness, which had so ruinously disappointed him. If he 
had gone further then, and ceased to connect himself 



94 THE LIFE OF 

with the printing-house, the house must have doubtless 
become bankrupt; but he would have been saved. A 
mistaken sense of honour, we firmly believe, constrained 
him to turn aside from this prudential course, and every 
successive year gave him more and more reason to re- 
pent it. His anxiety on this account was either marvel- 
lously slight, however, under the circumstances, or he 
marvellously concealed it. Other sorrows, other losses, 
seemed alone to engage his sympathy. When his first 
patron, Charles Duke of Buccleuch, died, he was incon- 
solable, just as he had been on the demise of the amiable 
Duchess. But while he was launching his two sons 
into life, the eldest, as a cornet of dragoons, the second, 
first to Oxford, and by and by as a clerk in the Foreign 
Office, the closest observer could not J discern the very 
faintest token of uneasiness about him on his own 
account. As, also, he rejoiced in the marriage of his 
eldest daughter with Lockhart,— so, by and by, the 
union of his eldest son with a Fifeshire heiress appeared 
to delight him. At last, however, the crash came. The 
year 1825 will be for ever memorable in the history of 
the financial affairs of this country, and to Scott, and to 
the broken reed on which he had too long leaned, it 
proved fatal. We must decline going into the incidents 
of that terrible crisis. Enough is done when we state 
that it did not come without warning. Over and over 
again Scott remonstrated against some of the measures 
which his partners proposed, and positively refused to 
join them in others. Yet with astounding self-delusion 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 95 

he believed that the storm would blow over, and that by 
energy and perseverance that success would yet be 
attained to which his sanguine counsellors pointed. The 
results are well known. 

By what motive guided we do not clearly see, but 
just as his affairs were clouding over, Scott began to 
keep a diary. It is upon the whole a sad record. He 
had spent the summer of 1825 in a tour through Ireland, 
where the reception awarded to him was enthusiastic ; 
and he intensely enjoyed the grotesque kindness of the 
most grotesque people on the face of the earth. In 
August, he returned through Wales and Cumberland to 
Abbotsford, where he received many visitors, among 
others Tom Moore, Mrs. Coutts, the Duke of St. Albans, 
and their suite. His outward bearing was what it had 
ever been, calm, genial, hospitable, kind. Yet the iron 
was entering into his soul, and the agony produced by it 
found fit expression in his journal. For example, on the 
14th of December, after his removal to Edinburgh (the 
diary seems to have been begun only on the 20th of 
November) we have this entry : — - 

" Affairs very bad again in the money-market. It 
must come here, and I have far too many engagements 
not to feel it. To end the matter at once, I intend to 
borrow £10,000, with which my son's marriage-contract 
allows me to charge the estate. This will enable me to 
dispense in a great measure with bank assistance, and 
sleep in spite of thunder. I do not know why it is — 
this business makes me a little bilious, or rather the 



96 THE LIFE OF 

want of exercise during the Session, and this late change 
of the weather to too much heat. But the sun and moon 
shall dance on the green ere carelessness, or hope of 
gain, or facility of getting cash, shall make me too rash 
again, were it but for the disquiet of the thing." 

A brave and wise resolve this — but it came too late. 
Four days subsequently he wrote thus — 

" Bee. 18. Poor T. S. called again yesterday. Through 
his incoherent and miserable tale I could see that he 
had exhausted each access to credit, and yet fondly 
imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences, 
he can work with literary zeal, unknown to his happier 
days. For myself, if things go badly in London, the 
magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his 
grasp. He must thenceforth be termed the Too-well- 
known. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling 
of independence. He shall no longer have the delight 
of waking in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, 
hasten to commit them to paper, and count them, worthily, 
as the means of planting scaurs, and purchasing such 
wastes ; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective 
visions of walks by 

' Fountain heads and pathless groves, 
Places which pale passion loves.' 

" This cannot be ; but I may work substantial hus- 
bandry, i.e., write history and such concerns. They will 
not be received with the same enthusiasm, at least I much 
doubt the general knowledge that an author must work 
for his bread, at least for improving his pittance, degrades 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 97 

him and his productions in the public eye. He falls 

into the second-rate rank of estimation. 

{ While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad, 
The high-mettled racer's a hack on the road.' 

"It is a bitter thought ; but if tears start at it, let them 
flow. My heart clings to the place I have created. 
There is scarce a tree in it that does not owe its existence 
to me." 

What an insight these sentences, written from a full 
heart, gives us into the character of the man. A lofty 
principle, carried to excess, becomes in his case a snare ; 
and aiming always at the highest place, he forgets that 
though it may be won, it cannot be permanently retained 
by measures which will not bear the test of sober judg- 
ment. " Where there is a secret there is always some- 
thing wrong." This is true in every instance, and its 
truth was never more distressingly illustrated than in 
his. Let us not.be misunderstood. Scott was no more 
capable of lending himself deliberately to a fraud than 
he was capable of committing murder. Yet what can be 
thought of the egregious self-deceit of one, who, priding 
himself on his reputation as a man of business, and wise 
in theory, as his letter to his friend Terry shows, could 
yet for so many years stand upon the very brink of ruin 
without appearing to know it ? James Ballantyne has 
represented this matter in a death-bed memorandum, 
from which Lockhart quotes without disputing its 
fairness : — 

" I must here say that it was one of Sir Walter's 

H 



98 THE LIFE OF 

weaknesses to shrink too much from looking evil in the 
face, and that he was apt to carry a great deal too far 
' sufficient for the day is the evil thereof I do not 
think it was more than three weeks before the catastrophe 
that he became fully convinced it was impending — if, 
indeed, his feelings ever reached the length of conviction 
at all. Thus, at the last, his fortitude was very sorely 
tried." 

We will not dwell at length upon the break up of 
this great and good man's fortunes. There was no 
parrying the blow. It fell, and Sir Walter was ruined. 
He might, under the circumstances, have done as other 
traders do, surrendered his property, and gone through 
the bankruptcy court, in which case, with his popu- 
larity still as great as ever, it was quite upon the cards 
that, after getting rid of his annoyances, he should have 
realised a second fortune, larger and more secure than 
the first. But to this his gallant spirit would not stoop. 
He put his affairs into the hands of private trustees. His 
creditors generously, though, as the event proved, not for 
themselves unwisely, accepted the arrangement, and he 
set himself to the task of writing off every shilling that 
he owed, or dying in the attempt * Observe how man- 
fully he expresses himself on the occasion. There is as 

* The debts of Ballantyne and Company, at the time of their 
failure, amounted to £117,000. The creditors were eventually paid in 
full. Scott had in his lifetime reduced the debt to £54,000, which 
was discharged by his executors out of the monies arising from his life- 
insurances, and the advances made by Mr. Cadell upon his copyright- 
property and literary remains. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 99 

much of nature in this burst of confidence as ever showed 
itself in his fits of despondency, and it is due to his 
memory to add that from the spirit of the resolve here 
enunciated he never afterwards departed. 

"Jan. 22, 1826. I feel neither dishonoured nor 
broken down by the bad, now really bad, news I have 
received. I have walked my last over the domains I 
have planted — sate the last time in the halls I have 
built. But death would have taken them from me if 
misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I 
loved so well ! There is just another die to turn up 
against me in this run of ill-luck, i.e., if I should break 
my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose 
my popularity with my fortune. The Woodstock and 
Boney may go to the paper-maker, and I may take to 
smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and 
intoxicate the brain another way. In prospect of ab- 
solute ruin I wonder if they would let 'me leave this 
Court of Session ; I would like, methinks, to go abroad, 

1 And lay my bones far from the Tweed.' 

But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do. It 
is odd when I set myself to work doggedly, as Dr. John- 
son would say, I am as I ever was — neither low-spirited 
nor distrait. In prosperous times I have sometimes felt 
my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is 
to me at least a tonic and a bracer ; the fountain is con- 
vulsed from its innermost recesses, as if the spirit of 
affliction had troubled it in its passage. Poor Pole, the 



100 THE LIFE OF 

harper, sent to offer me £500 or £600, probably his all. 
There is much good in the world after all. But I will 
involve no friend, either rich or poor. My own right 
hand shall do it, else I will be done in the slang language, 
and undone in common parlance. . . . Well, exertion, 
exertion ! O Invention, rouse thyself I May man be 
kind, may God be propitious. The worst is, I never 
quite know when I am right or wrong, and Ballantyne, 
who does know, will fear to tell me. Lockhart would 
be worth gold just now, but he too, might be too diffi- 
dent to speak broad out. All my hope is in the continued 
indulgence of the public." 

The above extract shows that Scott, like other men 
of energy as well as genius, found his best escape from 
care in constant employment. Formerly he had made a 
point of laying pen, ink, and paper aside by one o'clock 
in the day. Ebw he worked double tides, rising early, 
sitting late, and not unfrequently depriving himself of 
out-door exercise altogether. He had undertaken to 
write for Constable a Life of Napoleon, which was to 
come out in two volumes. The subject grew upon him, 
it was followed up eagerly and painfully, and covered 
in the end nine volumes. It constituted for two years 
the main object of his literary care, yet by no means 
engrossed it. Woodstock and the Chronicles of the Canon- 
gate, series after series, as well as articles for the Quar- 
terly Review and Blackwood's Magazine, went forward 
with it, pari passu; thus proving that, in his case at 
least, change of labour could be accepted as relaxation. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 101 

Nor was this all. He found it necessary in 1826, with 
a view to render his biography as accurate as possible, 
to inspect the documents laid up in the Foreign Offices 
of England and France, and paid, in consequence, visits 
of some duration both to London and Paris. On these 
occasions, as well in going as returning, he was Lock- 
hart's guest, and found himself just as much as ever the 
observed of all observers. George IV. commanded his 
presence at Windsor, where, in the fishing temple on 
Virginia Water, he seems to have spent two pleasant 
days. Eogers, Moore, both the Crokers, Lord Dudley, 
Sir Thomas Lawrence, Theodore Hook, and many more 
such like, met him at his son-in-law's table. He was 
the guest also of the Duke of Wellington, of Peel, of 
Croker, then Secretary to the Admiralty, where the 
leading statesmen of the day assembled to do him honour. 
Here is the entry of one such day : — 

"Nov. 16.- — Breakfasted with Eogers, with my 
daughter, and Lockhart. Eogers was exceedingly enter- 
taining in his dry, quiet, sarcastic manner. At eleven 
to the Duke of Wellington, who gave me a bundle of 
remarks on Bonaparte's Russian Campaign, written in 
his carriage during his late mission to St. Petersburgh. 
It is grievously scrawled, and the Eussian names hard 
to distinguish, but it shall do me yeoman's service. 
Thence I passed to the Colonial Office, where I con- 
cluded my extracts Lockhart and I dined at the Ad- 
miralty au grand couvert. No less than five Cabinet 
Ministers were present — Canning, Huskisson, Melville, 



102 THE LIFE OF 

Peel, and Wellington, with sub-secretaries by the bushel. 
The dinner was excellent, but the presence of too many 
men of distinguished rank and power always freezes the 
conversation. Each lamp shines brightest when placed 
by itself : when too close they neutralise one another." 

So wrote the man on whose head Tate might be said 
to be now pouring out the full vials of her wrath. 
Besides the entire loss of fortune, he was by this time a 
widower ; for, in April, Lady Scott had died, while her 
husband was from home. The house in Edinburgh (39 
Castle Street), where he had been wont to dispense a 
generous hospitality, was sold, and as often as business 
carried him to the Scotch metropolis he inhabited a 
lodging. His courage never failed. He fought the battle 
of the Scottish banking system in his letters of Malachi 
Malagrowther, and plunged into the Fair Maid of Perth. 
It was at this time that he judged it expedient to remove 
the veil which had long ceased in reality to cover his 
connection with the" Waverley Novels. It had become, 
in fact, a necessary proceeding ; because, to a republica- 
tion of these tales, with prefaces and notes, both he and 
his friends looked for the surest means of discharging 
the obligations under which he lay. Yet the avowal of 
the authorship at a dinner to William Murray the actor, 
over which he presided, took the general public a good 
deal by surprise. It was done, however, with excellent 
grace, and operated, as it seemed, as a sort of relief to 
his own feelings. Alas ! the end was drawing on. 

After completing the Fair Maid of Perth, Scott again 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



103 



visited London, where the first decided manifestations 
of the complaint nnder which he by-and-by snccumbed 
showed themselves. In the February preceding (he 




TOWN HOUSE, 39 CASTLE STREET. 



went to London in April) we find, indeed, in his journal 
an entry which shows that the mischief was already 
begun. He had worked unusually hard, dashing off 
forty printed pages of his story, when, dining afterwards 



104 THE LIFE OF 

in company with some old friends, an idea took posses- 
sion of him that he was living a second life, that 
" nothing that passed was said for the first time, that 
the same topics had been discussed, and the same per- 
sons had stated the same opinions on them." He tried 
to reason himself into the belief that the hallucination 
could be accounted for on the ground that old friends 
were likely to say over again to each other much that 
they had said before. But the sensation was so strong 
as to resemble what is called a mirage in the desert, or 
a calenture on board of ship, when lakes are seen in the 
desert and sylvan landscapes in the sea. He was much 
distressed by it, and the more that several glasses of 
wine which he took only augmented the disorder, and 
that something of it remained with him on the following 
day. In London the approach of the enemy was almost 
more marked. He had met at breakfast Mrs. Arkwright, 
who charmed the company with singing some of her 
own sweet music,- and especially delighted Sir Walter 
with the air to which she had set his beautiful song in 
the Pirate — 

" Farewell, farewell, the voice you hear." 

Lockhart thus describes what followed : — 
" He was sitting by me, at some distance from the 
lady, and whispered, as she closed, ' Capital words ; 
whose are they? Byron's, I suppose, but I don't re- 
member them/ He was astonished when I told him 
they were his own, in the Pirate. He seemed pleased 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 105 

at the moment ; but said the next minute, ' You have 
distressed me ; if memory goes, all is up with me, for 
that was always my strong point.'" 

The symptoms did not, however, return ; so he 
laboured on. Anne of Geierstein in due time made her 
appearance, and he then applied himself in earnest to 
what he called the " magnum opus," i.e., the preparation 
of a collected edition of the whole of the Waverley 
Novels, of which we have just spoken. The success of 
the undertaking was immense. Cadell had proposed to 
begin with an impression of 7000, but so numerous were 
the applications that he advanced the edition to 12,000, 
and the actual sale amounted to 35,000 per month. 
Scott saw in this a prospect of speedily ridding himself 
and the printing-house of their embarrassments, and 
went about his daily task — which was that of a giant — 
in great glee. The Tales of a Grandfather were in 
immense favour. The History of Scotland, which he had 
promised to Longmans for Lardner's Cyclopaedia, made 
progress. The Quarterly received repeated contributions, 
and preparations were set on foot for bringing out an 
illustrated edition of his poems. And here it is but just 
to the memory of one of his great admirers that we 
should notice the honourable part which the late Mr. 
Murray played in promoting the latter scheme. Scott 
had purchased back all his copyrights except the fourth 
share of Marmion, which belonged to Mr. Murray. He 
wrote to his son-in-law, Mr. Lockhart, proposing to pur- 
chase this also, and was answered by Mr. Murray him- 



106 THE LIFE OF 

self. The generous Bibliopolist would not sell for money 
what he valued far above its worth in the market, but 
in the handsomest manner he presented it to Scott, as a 
grateful acknowledgment of benefits already received. 
But the energies had been overtaxed ; and a nature, 
warm, generous, and clinging in its affections, was sorely 
tried by many deaths among those most dear to it. 
Erskine was dead, Gifford was dead; so were Sir George 
Beaumont, Sir William Forbes, and, though last, not 
least, there was Tom Purdie, who not long afterwards 
expired suddenly. This latter misfortune affected Scott 
quite as much as any calamity of the kind to which he 
had been subjected. 

" I have lost," he writes to Cadell, on the 4th of 
November 1829, "my old and faithful servant — my 
factotum, and am so shocked that I really wish to be 
quit of the country, and safe in town. I have this day 
laid him in his grave." 

The life which Sir Walter thenceforth led was one of 
sheer labour. Barely, and never without a pang of 
regret, would he relax his mind by entering into society 
of any kind. The warnings which had startled him, 
while they were yet recent, appeared to have lost their 
terrors, and he strained the machine as if it were labour- 
proof. It was a fatal error. On the 15th of February 
1830, a third seizure took him, at once more marked in 
its immediate character and in its effects more enduring. 
He had returned from the Parliament House at two 
o'clock, and was examining certain papers which an old 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 107 

lady had brought, and which he had promised to revise 
and correct for the press. The old lady sat beside him, 
and when he rose to dismiss her a slight convulsion was 
seen to agitate his face. He staggered into the drawing- 
room and fell flat on the floor, apparently insensible. A 
surgeon was sent for, who bled him. He was cupped 
again in the evening, and gradually recovered the pos- 
session of speech and the rest of his faculties. The blow 
was, however, struck ; for, though the outer world heard 
nothing of the incident, and he was able to go about as 
usual, submitting to the most rigid diet and otherwise 
living by rule, he was never the same man again. He 
covered day by day innumerable pages of manuscript, 
producing almost simultaneously his Letters on De- 
monology for Murray's " Family Library," and a further 
series of Tales of a Grandfather. But even in the 
former of these, the Letters on Demonology, evidence 
of fading powers is perceptible ; and in the stories from 
French history, which make up the latter, words and 
arrangement both are cloudy. He persevered, however, 
and wrote at the same time his Scottish History for 
Lardners Cyclopaedia, a work certainly not worthy of 
its high parentage. 

It was soon after the publication of these works that 
an arrangement was completed which for some time pre- 
viously had been in contemplation. The Government 
of the day had determined on reducing two out of the 
five Principal Clerkships of Session, and Sir Walter was 
noted for a retirement. "We confess that on looking 



108 THE LIFE OF 

back upon that transaction, the treatment which he re- 
ceived appears to us to have been the reverse of liberal. 
A career such as his ought not to have been subjected to 
the ordinary test of office life. He had done more by his 
writings to improve the tastes and raise the moral tone 
of his countrymen than any individual then living ; and 
being, as all the world knew, in pecuniary straits—bur- 
dened with liabilities which he refused to cast from him 
except by honourably and rigidly paying off the last 
farthing — it would have been rather a just than a gener- 
ous act had the Government assigned to him for life the 
full amount of his salary. This, however, was not done. 
But an exact account being taken of the years and 
months of his service, he was pensioned off, like an ordi- 
nary copying clerk, with £800 a-year. No doubt a hint 
was dropped that some special pension might be procured 
for him; but from this, with honest pride, he turned 
away. " My friends," he says in his diary, " before leav- 
ing office, were desirous to patch up the deficiency with 
a pension. I did not see well how they could do this 
without being charged with obloquy, which they shall 
not be on my account." When the above entry was 
made England had fallen upon troublous times. The 
cry for Parliamentary reform had been raised in high 
quarters, which Sir Walter, true to the principles of a 
lifetime, resisted ; and a pension specially conferred on 
him just before the Duke went out of office would have 
been at once looked upon, and not unnaturally, as a job. 
For pensions stank in men's nostrils, and Scott was by 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 109 

far too manly to endure that odium himself or volun- 
tarily to throw it upon others. But to a Treasury minute 
assigning to the author of Waverley the full pay of his 
clerkship for life, not a voice would have been raised in 
opposition. 

The loss of the clerkship involved a change in his 
domestic habits, of which the results were, to say the 
least, of very doubtful benefit. He could not afford, 
with a diminished income, to keep up two houses ; and, 
having no special business drawing him to Edinburgh, 
he made up his mind to live entirely at Abbotsford. 
" Such a break in old habits/' says Lockhart, " is always 
a serious experiment ; but in his case it was particularly 
so, because it involved his losing during the winter 
months, when men most need society, the intercourse of 
almost all that remained to him of dear familiar friends. 
He had, besides, a love for the very stones of Edinburgh, 
and the thought that he was never again to sleep under 
a roof of his own, in his native city, cost him many a 
pang." Another consideration weighed more perhaps 
with his family than with himself. Who could tell how 
soon a repetition of the fit, which had so alarmed them, 
might occur ? and, without medical assistance ready at 
hand, what was his valuable life worth ? It is melan- 
choly to read that an attempt was made to smuggle into 
the household, under the guise of an amanuensis, some 
clever young doctor ; and that, when the proposal was 
rejected, Mr. James Clarkson, "his friendly surgeon," 
secretly instructed a confidential servant how to use a 



110 THE LIFE OF 

lancet. We never looked upon a sadder picture than 
the following touching sentences portray : — 

" Affliction, as it happened, lay heavy at this time on 
the kind house of Huntly Burn also. The eldest Miss 
Ferguson was on her death-bed ; and thus, when my wife 
and I were obliged to move northwards at the beginning 
of winter, Sir Walter was left almost entirely dependent 
on his daughter Anne, William Laidlaw, and the worthy 
domestic whom I have named. Mr. Laidlaw attended 
him occasionally as an amanuensis, when his fingers were 
chilblained, and often dined as well as breakfasted with 
him ; and Miss Scott well knew that in all circumstances 
she might lean to Laidlaw with the confidence of a niece 
or a daughter." 

A more difficult and delicate task never devolved 
upon any man's friend than Mr. Laidlaw had about this 
time to encounter. He could not watch Scott from hour 
to hour — above all, he could not write to his dictation 
without gradually, slowly, most reluctantly, taking home 
to his bosom the conviction that the mighty mind which 
he had worshipped through more than thirty years of 
intimacy had lost something, and was daily losing some- 
thing more, of its energy. The faculties were there, and 
each of them was every now and then displaying itself 
in its full vigour ; but the sagacious judgment, the bril- 
liant fancy, the unrivalled memory, were all subject to 
occasional eclipse — 

" Along the chords the fingers strayed, 
And an uncertain warbling made." 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. Ill 

Evar and anon he paused, and looked round him, like 
one half-waking from a dream and mocked with shadows. 
The sad bewilderment of his gaze showed a momentary 
consciousness that, like Samson in the lap of the Philis- 
tine, "his strength was passing from him, and he was 
becoming weak like unto other men." Then came the 
strong effort of aroused will — the clouds dispersed as if 
before a current of purer air — all was bright and serene 
as of old — and then it closed again, as in yet deeper 
darkness. 

His main work was at this time Count Robert of Paris, 
interspersed and relieved by an article on heraldry, 
intended for the Quarterly Review. Alas ! even that 
went so lamely, that no use could be made of it. Those 
immediately about him, including Mr. Cadell, his pub- 
lisher, did their best to hide from himself what was too 
manifest to them. He was spared, therefore the mortifi- 
cation of feeling that the magician's wand had broken in 
his grasp ; but an incident, trifling in itself, gave him 
acute pain. It was determined to draw up in Eoxburgh- 
shire an address against the Eeform Bill, and Sir Walter 
devoted four entire days to preparing it. This elaborate 
paper was set aside for a shorter document from the 
hands of a plain country gentleman. Scott could not 
get over the disappointment. 

Another terrible blow fell upon him at this time. A 
meeting was called to petition against the Bill. He in- 
sisted on attending, and on moving one of the resolutions. 
The mob hissed him. He bore it, for a while, patiently ; 



112 THE LIFE OF 

but, becoming indignant, at last exclaimed, " I regard 
your gabble no more than the geese on the green." He 
then sat down, and his old magnanimity returned. By- 
and-by, the business being ended, he rose, and turning 
towards the door, bowed to the assembly. A fresh hiss 
greeted him : whereupon he bowed again, and took leave 
in the words of the doomed gladiator, Moriturus vos 
saluto. 

We must hurry over the remainder of this tale, 
which grows chapter by chapter more melancholy. 
Scott would work. Another and a more severe fit of 
paralysis scarcely kept him idle a fortnight, and remon- 
strance and advice were alike unavailing. Count Robert 
was completed, and Castle Dangerous begun. In order 
to put himself entirely right in regard to the scenery of 
that tale, he undertook with his son-in-law a journey 
into Lanarkshire. He had suffered grievous wrong at 
Jedburgh, where, going to vote for the Tory candidate, 
he was stoned and even spit upon by the mob. The 
people, at every stage of the expedition, to which we are 
now referring, treated him with marked respect ; and he 
was greatly moved by it. Having accomplished his 
object, he went on to Milton-Lockhart, the seat of Lock- 
hart's elder brother, the member for Lanarkshire, where 
a very small party of old friends was gathered to meet 
him. One of these, Mr. Elliot Lockhart of Borthwick- 
brae, had, like himself, been sorely stricken. Each saw 
in the other the ravages of disease, and they embraced 
with great emotion, but both forgot the directions of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 113 

their medical attendants, and the results were startling. 
Scott had promised over-night to visit his friend on his 
way home ; but, on the morrow, a messenger arrived to 
say that Borthwickbrae, on reaching his own house, had 
fallen in another fit and was despaired of. Immediately 
Sir Walter drew his host aside, and besought him to 
lend him horses as far as Lanark, for he must return 
home at once ; nor would he listen to any persuasions 
of delay. " ~No, William," was his answer, " this is a 
sad warning ; I must hence to work while it is called 
to-day, for the night cometh when no man can work. I 
put that text many a year ago on my dial-stone ; but it 
often preached in vain." 

The return to Abbotsford was far more rapid than 
the outward journey ; and Castle Dangerous was resumed, 
continued, and finished. But the brain could stand no 
more. He was accordingly persuaded to seek some 
rest, and to seek it at Florence, where his son Charles 
was now an attache. Let it not be forgotten that Sir 
James Graham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, at 
once, on the suggestion of Captain Basil Hall, undertook 
to place a frigate at his disposal. This was an act of 
exceeding grace on the part of a minister whom Sir 
Walter certainly did not support, and as such it was 
fully appreciated. " Things," he exclaimed, when the 
communication was made to him, " are still in the hands 
of gentlemen ; but woe is me. They have so under- 
mined the state of society, that it will hardly keep 
together when they cease to be at the head of it." 

I 



114 THE LIFE OF 

He had no wish to leave Abbotsford till the summer 
was over ; and his removal was not pressed. On the 
contrary, having completed, for the present, all his tasks, 
he seemed in comparative idleness, and surrounded by 
those who loved him dearly, to take out, as it were, a 
new lease of enjoyment. The Lockharts were at Chiefs- 
wood, and it was settled that they should dine with him, 
and he with them, on alternate days, Huntly Burn 
.had recovered its cheerfulness, and its inmates, with the 
Scots of Harden, the Pringles of Whytbank, the Eussells 
of Ashestiel, and the Brewsters, made up a most con- 
genial neighbourhood. Other pleasant people joined the 
circle, and one of them, the late Mr. Adolphus, describes 
so agreeably and so accurately the influence of this sort 
of society on Scott himself, that it would be unbecom- 
ing to tell the tale in any other words than his own : — 

" In the autumn of 1831, the new shock which had 
fallen on Sir Walter's constitution had left traces, not 
indeed very conspicuous, but painfully observable ; and 
he was subject to a constant though not a very severe 
regimen as an invalid. At table, if many persons were 
present, he spoke but little, I believe, from a difficulty 
in making himself heard, not so much because his 
articulation was slightly impaired as that his voice was 
weakened. After dinner, though he still sat with his 
guests, he forbore drinking, in compliance with the dis- 
cipline prescribed to him, though he might be seen once 
or twice, in the course of a sitting, to steal a glass, as if 
inadvertently. I could not perceive that his faculties of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 115 

mind were in any respect obscured, except that occasion- 
ally, but not very often, he was at a loss for some 
obvious word. This failure of recollection had begun, I 
think, the year before. The remains of his old cheerful- 
ness were still living within him, but they required 
opportunity and the presence of few persons to show 
themselves. He spoke of his approaching voyage with 
resignation rather than hope, and I could not find that 
he looked forward with much interest or curiosity to the 
new scenes in which he was about to travel. . . . 

" On the last day which I had the happiness to pass 
with him among his own hills and streams, he appointed 
an excursion to Oakwood and the Linns of Ettrick. Miss 
Scott and two other ladies, one of whom had not been 
in Scotland before, were of the party. He did the 
honours of the country with as much zeal and gallantry, 
inspirit at least, as he could have done twenty years 
earlier. I recollect that in setting out he endeavoured 
to plead his hardy habits as an old mail-coach traveller 
for keeping the least convenient place in the carriage. 
When we came to the Linns, he walked some way up 
the stream, and viewed the wild and romantic little tor- 
rent from the top of the high bank. He stood contem- 
plating it in an attitude of rest ; the day was past when 
a minute's active exertion would have carried him to 
the water's brink. Perhaps he was now, for the last 
time, literally fulfilling the wish of his own minstrel, 
that in the decay of life he might 

' Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break.' 



116 



THE LIFE OF 




So much was his giant strength reduced, that as he 
gazed upon the water, one of his staghounds, leaping 
forward to caress him, had almost thrown him down ; 
but for such accidents as these he cared very little. We 
travelled merrily homeward. As we went up some hill, 
a couple of children hung on the back of the carriage. 
He suspended his cudgel over them with a grotesque 
face of awfulness. The brats understood the counten- 
ance, and only clung the faster. ' They do not much 
mind the sheriff,' said he to us, with a serio-comic smile, 
and affecting to speak low. We came home late, and 
an order was issued that no one should dress. Though 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 117 

I believe he himself caused the edict to be made, he 
transgressed it more than any of the party." 

At last the summer wore itself out, and on the 23d 
of September Sir Walter departed, attended by his 
daughter Anne, and Lockhart his son-in-law, for London. 
Mrs. Lockhart had set out on the 20th to make ready 
for them, and, on the 28th, after a day spent at Eokeby, 
they reached Sussex Place, Eegent's Park. Scott no 
longer threw himself, however, into the vortex of fashion 
and gaiety. The time, indeed, would have been unfavour- 
able for dissipation had he been either able or willing 
to encounter it, for the reform struggle was at its height. 
A quiet dinner or two at No. 26, with small assemblies 
in the evening, were all that his strength would now 
bear. These he enjoyed. But he had left his beloved 
Tweed-side in search of health, and to that object all 
others were to be made subservient. The Government 
showed infinite zeal in making all the necessary arrange- 
ments for his voyage, and on the 23d of October he set 
out, attended by his eldest son, for Portsmouth. Here 
the Barham, one of the finest frigates in the service, lay 
to receive him ; and, in charge of a skilful and pleasant 
officer, Captain Pigot, he sailed from England. Malta 
w T as the first point reached, though they went out of the 
way that he might see, in transitu, a submarine volcano, 
which, during the brief period of its existence, was known 
as Graham's Island. Indeed, wherever he desired to go, 
thither Captain Pigot was prepared to carry him. We 
need not, however, stop to describe either the voyage or 



118 THE LIFE OF 

the manner of his existence in Malta and Naples. All 
men vied one with another to do him honour. But, 
alas ! the vast intellect clouded rapidly over. A con- 
sultation of physicians in London had ascertained, be- 
fore he departed, that softening of the brain was begun ; 
and day by day, and almost hour by hour, disease made 
progress. It was of the utmost importance that he 
should give his mind absolute rest, and that his diet 
should be strictly regulated. His mind could not rest ; 
and for the exhaustion brought on by toil, however 
slight, he too often sought and found a remedy in the 
use of stimulants. He projected, and actually began, a 
romance in Malta on the siege of that island, and nearly 
finished it ; as well as another shorter tale, entitled 
Bizarro, after he had been but a short time at Naples. 
It was to no purpose that Sir William Gell, seeking to 
divert his attention, led him to visit all the more remark- 
able places in the kingdom. He looked upon them with 
interest only so far as they seemed to awaken in his 
mind recollections of similar scenes in Scotland. " It 
was surprising," says his intelligent guide, when de- 
scribing a visit which they paid together to Paestum, to 
reach which they had to pass Nocera dei Pagani, " how 
quickly he caught at any romantic circumstance ; and I 
found, in a very short time, he had converted the Torre 
di Ciunse or Chiunse into a feudal residence, and already 
peopled it with a Christian host." So also it was with 
the researches which he appeared to make into the 
treasures of public and private libraries and galleries. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 119 

An old English MS. of the Romance of Sir Bevis of 
Hampton was more precious in his eyes than all the 
literary treasures which the Benedictine monastery of La 
Trinita della Cava could produce ; and among the pic- 
tures which he was carried to see, none interested him 
half so much as a representation of the fete given on the 
occasion of Cardinal York's promotion, wherein a good 
many of the most distinguished of the followers of the 
Stuarts are portrayed. The fact is, that Scott's mind 
had never been a classical mind, even when in its 
vigour. In the state of decay into which it had now 
fallen no other associations than those connected with 
old pursuits stirred it. 

We never read a sadder story than the narrative of 
this his last visit to the Continent. The scraps from his 
remarks on men and things, which the friends who 
attended him at various stages have preserved, are most 
touching, both for their acuteness, and for the deep pathos 
which pervades them. Take the following — Mr. Cheny 
is speaking of Scott at Eome, just after the death of 
Goethe had been communicated to him : — 

" He spoke of Goethe with regret ; he had been in 
correspondence with him before his death, and had pur- 
posed visiting him at Weimar on returning to England. 
I told him I had been to see Goethe the year before, 
and that I found him well, and though very old, in the 
perfect possession of all his faculties. ' Of all his facul- 
ties !' he replied ; ' it is much better to die than to sur- 
vive them, and better still to die than to live in the 



120 THE LIFE OF 

apprehension of it ; but the worst of all/ he added 
thoughtfully, ' would have been to have survived their 
partial loss, and yet to be conscious of his state.' He 
did not seem, however, to be a great admirer of some of 
Goethe's works. ' Much of his popularity,' he observed, 
' was owing to pieces which in his latter moments he 
might have wished recalled.' He spoke with much 
feeling. I answered that he must derive great consola- 
tion from the reflection that his own popularity was owing 
to no such cause. He remained silent for a moment, 
with his eyes fixed on the ground. When he raised 
them, as he shook me by the hand, I perceived his light- 
blue eye sparkled with unusual moisture. He added, 
' I am drawing near to the close of my career ; I am fast 
shuffling off the stage. I have been, perhaps, the most 
voluminous author of the day ; and it is a comfort to 
me to think, that I have tried to unsettle no man's 
faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have 
written nothing which on my death-bed I should wish 
blotted.' " 

Sir Walter had become very impatient to return 
home. All the charms of Italy were a burthen to him, 
and on the 16th of April that journey began which 
ended at Abbotsford. Whatever was possible to gratify 
his wishes, and soothe his irritability, was done by his 
son Charles and the faithful servant Mcolson, who 
attended him. They passed by Venice, through the 
Tyrol, Munich, Ulm, and Heidelberg, to Frankfort ; but 
nothing in these several places, not even the fondly anti- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 121 

cipated chapel at Innsbruck, arrested his attention. At 
Mayence he went on board a Ehine steam-boat, and 
seemed to enjoy the scenery of that unrivalled river • 
but, as soon as his carriage was resumed at Cologne, he 
relapsed into indifference. At Mmeguen another apo- 
plectic seizure occurred, which lasted some minutes ; 
but, being bled by Mcolson, he recovered his conscious- 
ness, and finally, at Eotterdam, took ship for London. 
He arrived at the St. James's Hotel, Jermyn Street, in 
possession, by fits and starts, of his faculties, and that 
was all. Sir Henry Halford, Dr. Holland, and one 
whom he dearly loved, Dr. Ferguson, were in constant 
attendance upon him ; and the several members of his 
family never left him, except for repose. Nor was the 
feeling of sympathy confined within the domestic circle. 
High and low, rich and poor, from the royal family to 
the hackney-coachman plying in the streets — all classes 
of persons were earnest in their inquiries about him. 
The following sentences we copy from the MS. diary of 
Dr. Ferguson, whose sad loss to society and to them- 
selves his many friends have not yet ceased to deplore. 
They describe the condition of the illustrious patient 
very touchingly : — 

" July 29, 1832. — Sir Walter lay on the second-floor 
back room of the St. James's Hotel, in Jermyn Street. 
He was attended by his faithful servant Mcolson, who 
lifted him out [of bed] with the ease of a child. I never 
saw anything more magnificent than his chest and neck. 
The head, as he lay on the pillow, with the collar of his 



122 THE LIFE OF 

shirt thrown back, seemed but slightly to swell above 
the throat. He was calm, but never collected, during 
the time he was in Jermyn Street. Still, he either 
imagined himself in the steamboat, or the noise of the 
carriages in the street brought up the last election at 
Jedburgh, where he had been pelted. 

" Strange thing it is for palsy to arrest the whole 
current of thought in the mind at the moment at which 
it occurs. I once knew a musician who, while putting 
on his stockings, fell down in an apoplectic fit. He sur- 
vived one month, and during this time said nothing but 
' damn the stockings,' and in that faith died. 

" His constant yearning to return to Abbotsford at 
last caused Sir Henry Halford, Dr. Holland, and myself, 
to consent to his removal. It was on a calm clear even- 
ing of the 7th of July 1832 that every preparation was 
made. He sat in his arm-chair facing the window, 
which permitted the last rays of the setting sun to fall 
on his white uncovered head. Eound his body a large 
loose wrapper had been thrown. His eye was so bright 
and calm that Lockhart and myself both remarked its 
vigorous lustre; only it betokened little or no interest 
in the events before him, but appeared lighted by in- 
ward thoughts. He suffered himself to be lifted into 
his carriage which was in the street. A crowd had 
gathered round it, and I observed that more than one 
gentleman walked his horse up and down to gaze on the 
wreck of the author of Waverley. His children were 
all deeply affected. Mrs. Lockhart trembled from head 



SLR WALTER SCOTT. 123 

to foot, and wept bitterly. Charles Scott, Lockhart, and 
Major Scott, were sad. Trie first looked wretched ; the 
second was pale, absorbed, and impatient ; the last was 
the least affected. Thus surrounded by those nearest to 
him, he appeared, while yet alive, to be carried to his 
tomb ; for such was the effect on my mind of the long 
procession of mourning friends." 

Well nigh forty years have run their course since 
the events here recorded befell ; thirty-seven since the 
record was made. Of all the individuals connected with 
it, including the recorder himself, not one now walks 
this earth ; and the few outside that circle, the writer of 
these sentences among them, who in more happy days 
were privileged from time to time to come within it, 
feel while they look round as some solitary mariner may 
be supposed to do who has escaped indeed from the 
wreck on which his shipmates have perished, but only 
to watch the tide, which on its rise must sweep him 
from the rock to which he clings. 

Sir Walter continued in this state during his voyage 
to Leith, and throughout the brief interval of his rest in 
Edinburgh. They placed him in his carriage still in a 
torpid state. But when they began to descend into the 
Vale of Gala, the beauties of that well-remembered scene 
appeared all at once to shake up his memory. He 
gazed about, and the words, " Gala Water ! surely — 
Buckholme ! Torwoodlee ! " escaped him in a broken 
murmur. By-and-by the outline of the Eildons burst 
on him, and he became greatly excited ; indeed, when 



124 



THE LIFE OF 



on turning himself on the couch his eye caught at length 
his own towers, at the distance of a mile, he sprang up 
with a cry of delight. It required all the strength of 
Lockhart and his servant to keep him from leaping out 



of the carriage. 





EILDON HILLS. 



The return to Abbotsford acted upon him as a 
breath of air acts upon a fire which is dying out for 
lack of fuel. He recognised and hailed William Laid- 
law, who stood at the hall door to receive him. He 
alternately sobbed and smiled over his dogs, as they 
fawned on him and licked his hands. He slept soundly 
that night, and awoke on the morrow perfectly conscious 
and collected. They procured a Bath-chair from Huntly 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 125 

Burn, and he was wheeled up and down for some time 
on the turf, and among the rose-beds of his garden, then 
in full bloom. At his own desire they next wheeled 
him through his rooms, and he kept saying as he moved, 
" I have seen much, but nothing like my own house ; 
give me one turn more." 

The delusion had come over him when in Malta 
that all his debts were paid off, and that the future 
would be to him a season of more perfect enjoyment 
than the past. A different persuasion took possession 
of him soon after he found himself at home again ; and 
casting aside the plaids with which they had covered 
him in his chair, he said, a day or two after his arrival, 
" This is sad idleness, I shall forget what I have been 
thinking of if I don't set it down now. Take me into 
my room and fetch me the keys of my desk." 

" He solicited this so earnestly," says Lockhart, " that 
we could not refuse ; his daughter went into his study, 
opened his writing-desk, and laid paper and pens in the 
usual order, and I then moved him through the hall and 
into the spot where he had always been accustomed to 
work. When the chair was placed at the desk, and he 
found himself in his old position, he smiled and thanked 
us, and said, ' Now give me my pen and leave me a little 
to myself.' Sophia put the pen into his hand, and he 
endeavoured to close his fingers upon it, but they refused 
their office, and it dropped on the paper. He sank back 
among his pillows, silent tears rolling down his cheeks ; 
but composing himself by-and-by, he motioned to me to 



126 



THE LIFE OF 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 127 

wheel him out of doors again. Laidlaw met us at the 
porch, and took his turn of the chair. Sir Walter, after 
a little while, again dropped into slumber. When he 
was awaking Laidlaw said to me, ' Sir Walter has had 
a little repose.' ' No, Willie/ said he, ' no repose for Sir 
Walter but the grave.' The tears again rushed from 
his eyes, — ' Friends,' said he, ( don't let me expose myself 
— get me to bed.' " 

A bed had been put up for his use in the dining- 
room, into which they moved him. He never rose from 
it more. About half-past one P.M., on the 21st of Sep- 
tember 1832, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the pre- 
sence of all his children. It was a beautiful day, so 
warm that every window was wide open, and so per- 
fectly still that the sound of all others most delicious 
to his ear — the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its 
pebbles — was distinctly audible as they knelt round the 
bed, and his eldest son kissed him and closed his eyes. 

So lived and died one of the greatest writers, one of 
the noblest men, whom Britain — may we not say 
Europe? — has produced. Sir Walter Scott had his 
failings, and we have not scrupled to lay them bare. 
Few indeed that have ever lived could better endure to 
have their failings exposed. But his merits, as well 
moral as intellectual, were of so transcendant a nature 
that they cast quite into the shade errors which had 
their root neither in vice nor in meanness, but in an 
imagination preternaturally gigantic. Sir Walter Scott 
was as much in earnest when he set all Scotland asojr 



128 THE LIFE OF 

to greet the arrival of George IV., as if he had taken a 
leading part to bring back the Stuarts to the capital of 
their forefathers. The glass from which the King 
drained his whisky to the poet's health, on the quarter- 
deck of the Eoyal yacht, would have been laid up 
among the most sacred relics at Abbotsford, had it not 
been crushed to pieces by an accident. In like manner 
his own manner of life on Tweed-side, his Abbotsford 
hunts, his joyous carouses, transported him back to 
times when moss-trooping was a manly occupation. 
There is not one of his tales, whether in prose or verse, 
which fails to show upon the face of it that the scenes 
which are therein described were as much realities to 
him as if he had lived through them. It was this 
chronic state of hallucination, indeed, this inability to 
free himself from the spells of enchantment, which not 
only gave all the colouring to his best romances, but 
made the man himself what he was. He could no more 
help buying up land, building a castle, dressing its walls 
with trophies of war and of the chase, and emblazoning 
its roof with the quarterings of noble families, than he 
could fly. Yet how generous he was ; how gentle, how 
considerate in all his dealings with all who approached 
him ; how unselfish, how true to his friendships, how 
willing to forget and to forgive wrongs, by whomsoever 
committed ! Only once, in his whole life, is he known 
to have acted with rudeness to any one, and that was 
when he turned his back upon the late Lord Holland, 
because Lord Holland had spoken ungenerously, as he 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 129 

conceived, of a favourite brother in the House of Lords. 
His religious principles were fixed and settled, but 
without the faintest approach to ostentation. In the 
intervals from suffering which his malady in its last 
stage allowed him, he delighted in having read to him por- 
tions of Scripture. Lockhart, describing one of these 
interviews, says : — "After again enjoying the Bath-chair 
for perhaps a couple of hours out of doors, he desired to 
be drawn into the library, and placed by the central 
window, that he might look down upon the Tweed ; then 
he expressed a wish that I should read to him, and 
when I asked from what book, he said, ' Need you ask, 
there is but one.' I chose the 14th chapter of St. 
John's Gospel ; he listened with mild devotion, and 
said, when I had done, ' Well, this is a great comfort ! 
I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as if I were to 
be myself again.' In this placid frame he was again 
put to bed, and had many hours of soft slumber." 

Of Scott's great personal courage there could be no 
doubt. He had some opportunities of proving this in his 
scuffles with democrats and rioters in early life ; and later, 
when General Gourgaud blustered about what he had 
written of that gentleman's proceedings at St. Helena, he 
anticipated a challenge, and was ready to accept it. His 
sense of knightly honour, indeed, was keen to a degree, 
and on one melancholy occasion he showed it. His son- 
in-law, as is well known, got involved in a literary con- 
troversy which brought upon him a heap of unjustifiable 
personal abuse from his opponent. " I am sorry for it, 

K 



130 THE LIFE OF 

John," was Sir Walter's remark, when Lockhart declared 
his intention of seeking the redress of a duel, " but you 
cannot do otherwise, you must fight him."* Qualities 
like these, by whomsoever possessed, are always, as they 
deserve to be, popular ; and when, as in the case of Scott, 
they are combined with the genius which stirs the hearts 
of nations, they give to their possessor a place in the 
people's love which no other eminence can command. 
Proofs of the veneration in which all classes held him, 
greeted Scott wherever he went. Twice, on the occasion 
of the coronation of George IV., this was shown in a 
remarkable way. The Eev. Mr. Harness, the accom- 
plished friend of Mrs. Siddons and Lord Byron, alas! like 
almost all who knew and admired Scott in the flesh, 
now gathered to his fathers, describes that while he was 
standing in Westminster Hall, a spectator of the coro- 
nation feast, he observed Sir Walter trying, but in vain, to 
make his way through the crowd to a seat which had been 
reserved for him. " There's Sir Walter Scott," said Mr. 
Harness aloud, " let us make way for him." There was 
no need for more. The throng pressed itself back, so as 
to make a lane for Scott, and he passed through without 
the slightest inconvenience. The same night, walking 
home with a friend, they fell upon a part of the street 
which was guarded by the Greys, and by which orders 

* Happily, public opinion is more sound in regard to duels 
now than it was forty years ago ; but we can judge men fairly 
only by the standard of their own condition, and that of the 
acre in which they lived. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 131 

were given that no one should be allowed to pass. 
" Take my arm, Sir Walter," said his friend, " and we will 
go elsewhere." "What Sir Walter?" demanded the 
sergeant in command of the party. " Sir Walter Scott " 
was the reply. "Sir Walter Scott!" exclaimed the 
sergeant, " the pride of Scotland ! Make way, men, this 
is Sir Walter Scott, he shall go where he pleases," and 
way was made. Similar to this was an incident which 
befell, when George IY. was in Edinburgh. Sir Walter 
was proceeding with Sir Eobert, then Mr. Peel, up the 
High Street, to show him the Castle. The throng was 
great, and Mr. Peel observed, "Are you not afraid that 
these good people will mob us, out of admiration for 
you?" "Oh, no," was the reply ; "they are too full of 
loyalty at this moment to care for anything else." It 
was not so ; the mob soon recognised their favourite, 
and they did not hustle or incommode him, but they 
greeted him with cheers, as if he had been the King. 

As to the dwellers on the Border — his " own people," 
as he called them — to them he came as near to the con- 
dition of a leading chieftain in their clan as it was 
possible for any man in the nineteenth century to do 
The sheriff's will was law to his humble neighbours — 
the sheriff's society the greatest enjoyment of their lives 
" Eh ! Meg," said a Border farmer to his wife, as he un 
dressed to go to bed, after an Abbotsford hunt-dinner 
" I wish I could sleep a towmont (twelvemonth) 
There's naething worth living for, binna the Abbots- 
ford hunt and the dinner." 



132 



THE LIFE OF 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 133 

Scott's personal appearance was striking and peculiar. 
In height he surpassed the middle size. His shoulders 
were broad, his chest wide, his arms strong, his hands 
large. But for the shrunken limb he would have been 
the very beau ideal of a stalwart Liddesdale yeoman. 
His features were not regular : his eyes were grey, and 
deeply set in their sockets ; his forehead was broad and 
high. When in repose his countenance was heavy ; but 
no sooner was his fancy appealed to than it lighted up, 
and eye and mouth became alike expressive of emotion 
— either ludicrous or pathetic. His voice was pleasing, 
though he knew nothing of music ; he read well, but 
with a strong Scottish accent. His conversation over- 
flowed with humour ; and in discussing the merits of 
other men, he seemed always to look about for some- 
thing to praise. No man ever lived who won so many 
friends and made so few enemies. Absence of all 
literary envy and jealousy was one of the most striking 
features of his character. Lord Byron might well say, 
Scott could be jealous of no one. 

It was decided that Sir Walter's funeral should be 
conducted in a very unostentatious manner, only the 
oldest of his friends being invited to be present. The 
coffin was borne to the hearse and from the hearse to the 
grave by his old domestics and foresters, who petitioned 
that no mercenary hand should be allowed to touch it. 
Yet of voluntary followers, as soon as the procession set 
forward, the throng was so great that the carriages alone 
extended over more than a mile. All the inhabitants of 



134 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



the villages through which the cortege passed turned 
out in black, and with heads uncovered. The wide 
enclosure of the Abbey grounds was filled in like 
manner ; and amid profound and reverential silence 
Archdeacon Williams read the service. Sir Walter sleeps 
beside his wife in the sepulchre of his fathers ; and not 
far apart from him lies all that was mortal of his son-in- 
law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart. 



tf.t 



A-~ - - . 







TOMBSTONE AT DRYBURGH ABBEY. 



